African Journal of Gender and Women Studies

African Journal of Gender and Women Studies ISSN 2516-9831 Vol. 5 (4), pp. 001-006, April, 2020. © International Scholars Journals

Review

Inhibiting influences of some traditional practices in the home on girl-child's interest development in science

Bernadette Ezeliora¹* and Jude O. Ezeokana²

¹Department of Science Education, Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki, Nigeria.

²Department of Psychology, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.

Accepted 10 December, 2019

Abstract

The home is the cradle for development from where the girl-child builds and develops her knowledge, inclinations and interest. Unfortunately, the home which should provide the girl-child the good environment for developing scientific skills has become an obstacle to the girl-child's scientific development. There are a continuum of parental attitudes and traditional practices in the home directed to the girl-child that are considered harmful and obstacles to girl-child's acquisition of the basic scientific skills. These practices vary from disinterestedness on the needs of the girl-child and exploitation to open hostility, over protection and excessive restriction of the girl-child, male preference, absentee parenting and early marriage and so on. The consequences of these practices on the girl-child result to emotional break down that is manifested by their lack of self-esteem, lack of self-confidence, poor self actualization and evaluation, learning difficulty, distractibility and destruction of academic ambition of the girl-child. As a result, the girl-child lacks the will power to learn difficult subjects like science and mathematics and thus, develop disinterestedness and poor attitude towards science that has helped to increased low women/girls representation in science. Educational implications are discussed and recommendations were made.