Penalties for Pregnancy

Even though my ongoing mandate is to focus on issues of economic violence against women, this week my work has been interrupted by a new task.

The Ghana Education Service has stipulated that students who get pregnant during the schoolterm will not be allowed to write their final exams. While on the surface this type of regulation seems to be aimed at reducing student pregnancies so that people will focus on their studies, in effect it is discrimination against women and only serves to prevent women from having the opportunity to get a useful education equal to that of men in the same program. There was quite the outcry against this decision of the Ghana Education Service. Eventually the media reported that the Ghana Education Service had recanted and would allow pregnant students to write their exams this month. However, since oftentimes around here things are announced but not actually followed through, I have been tasked with interviewing the principals of Teacher's Colleges here in Ghana to find out whether they are actually allowing their pregnant students to write their finals this month or not.

Yesterday I took a trotro out to the Teacher's College here in Accra and met with the Vice Principal of the Accra College of Education who assured me that while some pregnant students have choosen not to write their exams this year due to their pregnancy (the students are given a year's deferral if they are pregnant at the time of the final exams), the students were apparently given a free choice to write if they felt they were able to handle it during their pregnancy. I need to check with some other jurisdictions as well and see if I can find a more reliable method to get the information I need (not sure if the principals are just telling me what I want to hear...) but that is what I am up to this week.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201306201399.html?viewall=1