THE CONTRIBUTION OF FORMAL EDUCATION TO POVERTY REDUCTION AMONG WOMEN IN THE TAMALE METROPOLIS

Abstract

Poverty results from violations of human rights, including the right to education, which disproportionately affect girls and women. Various grounds of discrimination combine, trapping girls in a vicious circle of denied rights. Genial of the right to education leads to exclusion from the labour market and marginalization into the informal sector or unpaid work (Katarina Tomasevski, 2004). This paper identifies strategies aimed at accelerating poverty reduction through formal education among women. The research gathered data from two main sources namely: secondary and primary sources. The three main techniques employed in gathering the primary data were: questionnaire survey, focus group discussion and in-depth interview. The study revealed that, formal education would produce a healthy and skillful women workforce with access to economic resources. These would ensure that women generate more income necessary to meet their basic needs and reduce poverty. Also, the study revealed that employment in the Tamale metropolis is as high as eighty-seven percent, however income returns and daily expenditure of women in the metropolis reveals that greater chunk of them still live in poverty. The researcher therefore makes the following 'recommendations; there is the need for encouragement of tertiary education, intensification of birth control measures, enhancement of livelihood empowerment programmes .which should target all women especially uneducated woman as well as female household heads, encouragement of gender equality, and making health care services more accessible to women.