Is There an Early Gender Gap in School Readiness Among 3-4-year-old Children? Evidence from Ghana

Gender inequalities in education persist in developing countries, but comprehensive policies to address them areoften lacking. Using microlevel data from Ghana's Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), we investigated thepresence of an early gender gap in school readiness among 3-4-year-old children. First, we built two multidimen-sional indexes of school readiness that account for children's ability to read, count, recognise numbers, interactwith peers and others, follow rules and be independent for their health outcomes and physical skills. Second, weestimated the gender gap while controlling for factors affecting school readiness using regional fixed effects. Wefound no evidence of a gender difference in children's school readiness. This result is robust to several specificationsand sensitivity tests. In contrast, the results showed that a mother's education, a father's involvement and the factof living in an urban area are positively associated with school readiness for both boys and girls. Based on thesefindings, we argue that the educational gender gap in Ghana most likely reflects the unequal access to schoolingopportunities between boys and girls. Hence, policy makers should target the barriers in school access for bothboys and girls to achieve educational gender equity