Chapter 4: Understanding the Gambia Success Story in Girls’ Education: Enabling Factors and Remaining Challenges

This chapter presents a case study of gender equity in education policy and practice in The Gambia, a small but densely populated country in West Africa that has been among those countries where remarkable strides in girls’ education have been achieved, supported by the formulation and enforcement of policies, strategies, and frameworks that promote the attainment of the right to education for all. Using Unterhalter’s (2007) conceptual framing of gender equity in education policy orientations (interventionist/institutional/interactive) our central objective is to better understand the reasons behind the apparent Gambian success story, but also to suggest the limits of and remaining challenges for gender equity policy and programing in the country. Two related arguments are made. First, that the Gambia case illustrates the importance of a multidimensional policy approach to addressing gender-based inequalities in education. Second, we argue that The Gambia case also illustrates Unterhalter’s claim that while the strategies associated with interventionist/instrumentalist and institutional approaches may be necessary, they are nonetheless insufficient if we want to connect and pursue gender equity in education as a matter of social justice, and not merely for its assumed socioeconomic benefits.