How Girls Achieve by Sally Nuamah: Why Schools Must Become Feminist

Sally A. Nuamah’s How Girls Achieve is a clear-eyed and necessary examination of why so many girls continue to struggle in schools that were never designed with them in mind. Nuamah, a scholar, activist and filmmaker whose own path ran through low-income Chicago classrooms and later Northwestern and Duke, draws on ethnographic work in South Africa, Ghana and the United States to make a deceptively simple claim: access to schooling is not enough. What girls need are institutions that actively cultivate achievement-oriented identities. The book’s central thesis is that feminist schools, deliberately organised

to redistribute power, teach strategy and foster the audacity to challenge limiting norms, are essential if girls are to achieve both academic success and lasting well-being. Everyone who cares about educational equity, gender justice or the long-term development of communities should read it. The ground reality is that millions of girls still face sexual violence, unequal resources, racialised discipline and quiet institutional neglect, and this volume refuses to treat those conditions as background noise.

Nuamah opens by stating the problem with unusual directness. “Most schools never had girls in mind to begin with” (p. 3). Decades of global campaigns and billions of dollars in aid have expanded enrolment, yet too many disadvantaged girls still drop out, underperform or emerge damaged by the very institutions meant to liberate them. She rejects the popular remedy of preaching grit. “Preaching grit doesn’t help girls; it actively harms them” (p. 8). Resilience framed as individual toughness ignores the structural costs girls absorb simply to remain in school. In its place Nuamah offers the concept of net achievement: academic success achieved without the lasting harm of violence, identity suppression or toxic pressure. “Net achievement constitutes both attaining academic success and building a healthy educational identity that allows a student to attain in different settings” (p. 6).

The book is organised around three detailed case studies and a broader empirical analysis. Chapter 1 examines a school in Cape Town, South Africa, where girls confront the aftermath of apartheid, high rates of sexual violence and limited material resources. The school provides free sanitary products, adopts a gender-neutral uniform policy and includes discussions of rape and abuse in Life Orientation classes. These measures are presented not as extras but as basic conditions for safety. “Becoming safe is the first requirement of any feminist school” (p. 35). Without physical and psychological safety, the rest of the educational project collapses.

Chapter 2 turns to a K–4 school in a large urban setting in the United States, focusing on the experiences of Black girls. Here the barriers include racialised discipline, the absence of affirming role models and the everyday messages that lower expectations. The school responds with group affirmations, exposure to Black female leaders, and positive discipline strategies that replace punitive responses with recognition of students’ potential. “Schools that fail to address racialised gender dynamics reproduce the very inequities they claim to oppose” (p. 67). Nuamah shows how young Black girls learn early to navigate both gender and racial hierarchies, often at the cost of their own sense of possibility.

Chapter 3 follows girls in a Ghanaian school, many of them the first in their families to pursue higher education. The institutional culture emphasises moral discipline, religious values and self-belief, framed in ways that accord with local norms while still opening space for girls to take leadership roles. Positive affirmations and opportunities for public speaking help build confidence. Yet even here, financial barriers and community expectations continue to constrain outcomes. “Achievement-oriented identities require more than encouragement; they require institutional structures that make ambition sustainable” (p. 98).

Across these settings Nuamah identifies three interlocking traits that constitute an achievement-oriented identity: self-confidence, strategic navigation of barriers, and the audacity to transgress limiting social norms. “Achievement-oriented identities encompass a set of traits, primarily those of self-confidence, strategy, and transgression” (p. 15). These are not innate qualities. They are cultivated, or suppressed, by the daily practices of schools. Feminist schools, she argues, must deliberately teach girls how and when to challenge society’s expectations. “Institutions that do this work are not simply friendly to girls or sensitive to gender. They are feminist schools” (p. 12). Drawing on bell hooks’s notion of education as the practice of freedom, Nuamah insists that equity requires the redistribution of power rather than mere inclusion. “For schools to take on the work of equity and thus liberation, they must disrupt inequitable power relations and redistribute them” (p. 12).

Chapter 4 shifts to quantitative analysis, examining data on self-confidence and attitudes toward mathematics and science from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study across the three countries. Confidence matters, but it cannot by itself overcome structural inequalities of race, class and gender. “Confidence plays a role in improving students’ academic achievements, but cannot alone bridge learning and achievement gaps that are based on inequalities by race, class, and gender” (p. 142). The chapter is careful not to dismiss non-cognitive skills; it simply refuses to treat them as substitutes for institutional change.

The conclusion widens the argument. Feminist schools are not only for girls. By creating environments free from toxic masculinity and hierarchical gender norms, they benefit boys and students of diverse gender identities as well. “Letting all students learn requires institutions that no longer treat some children as afterthoughts” (p. 168). Nuamah ends with a practical orientation, offering resources and questions that educators and policymakers can use to assess the gender equity of their own schools.

Throughout the book certain themes recur with quiet force. Safety is foundational. Power dynamics in classrooms matter as much as formal curriculum. Democratic practices that give girls real voice build the confidence that lectures cannot. Role models and affirming messages are necessary but insufficient without structural support. And the cost of achievement, the damage absorbed along the way, must be counted if success is to mean anything lasting. “What you learn in school has to prepare you for the world where you’ll put that knowledge to work” (p. 9). “Developing resilience is not a gender-neutral undertaking” (p. 10). “Many schools across the globe reproduce and perpetuate gender inequities. They are hostile toward girls and women” (p. 4).

Nuamah’s evidence is drawn from sustained immersion rather than snapshot surveys. She listens carefully to students, teachers and administrators, allowing their voices to complicate any simple narrative of progress or failure. The comparative design is particularly valuable. By placing Cape Town, urban America and Ghana side by side, she shows both the specificity of local constraints and the recurring patterns of institutional neglect. The concept of net achievement offers a useful corrective to narrow metrics that celebrate test scores while ignoring the human cost of obtaining them.

The book’s greatest strength is its refusal of individualised solutions. In a policy climate that often celebrates grit, growth mindsets and personal resilience, Nuamah insists that the problem is institutional design. This is a welcome and necessary corrective. The ethnographic detail gives the argument flesh. Readers encounter specific girls, specific teachers and specific school practices rather than abstract categories. The cross-national scope prevents any easy assumption that the challenges are unique to one region or one racial group. The explicit feminist framing, drawing on classic, Black, Third World and Africana womanist traditions, is intellectually honest and politically clear. “Feminist schools should be models of equity that protect children from threats that impose a differential cost on their ability to secure equivalent net achievement” (p. 13).

A further strength is the practical orientation. Nuamah does not stop at critique. She describes concrete practices, free sanitary products, gender-neutral uniforms, discussions of sexual violence, affirming rituals, leadership opportunities, that schools can adopt. The resources section at the end invites readers to examine their own institutions. The writing is accessible without being simplistic, making the book useful for educators and policymakers as well as scholars.

Yet the volume has limitations. The case studies, while rich, are limited in number. Three schools cannot represent the full diversity of educational contexts even within the three countries examined. The quantitative chapter, though careful, is relatively brief and leaves open questions about how confidence interacts with specific institutional practices over time. Longitudinal data on the long-term effects of the practices described would strengthen the argument. The treatment of boys and non-binary students, while affirmative in principle, remains underdeveloped. Nuamah asserts that feminist schools benefit everyone, but the empirical material focuses overwhelmingly on girls. A more sustained examination of how boys experience and respond to these institutional changes would deepen the analysis.

Intersectionality is present but uneven. The U.S. chapter attends carefully to the interplay of race and gender for Black girls. The South African and Ghanaian chapters register class and residual colonial structures, yet the full complexity of how caste-like hierarchies, religion, disability and rural-urban divides shape girls’ experiences receives less systematic attention. The book’s emphasis on institutional redesign is powerful, yet it sometimes underplays the wider political economy that shapes school resources and community expectations. Poverty, labour markets and state capacity appear as background conditions rather than objects of sustained analysis.

These gaps do not invalidate the central argument. They simply mark the boundaries of a single study. How Girls Achieve succeeds in shifting the conversation from individual resilience to institutional responsibility. It provides both a conceptual vocabulary, feminist schools, net achievement, achievement-oriented identities, and concrete illustrations of what those ideas can look like in practice.

Why Indian Youth Readers Must Read This Book

For young readers in India the book offers a useful mirror and a set of practical questions. The ground reality is that primary enrolment for girls has improved markedly, yet secondary completion, learning outcomes and safety remain uneven across states, castes and income groups. Early marriage, household labour, distance to school, inadequate sanitation and the quiet lowering of expectations continue to shape trajectories. Nuamah’s insistence that access is not enough resonates directly with the Indian experience. Building more classrooms without addressing violence, gender norms and institutional culture leaves the deeper work unfinished.

Indian youth often hear that the country is playing catch-up on human development. This book makes that phrase concrete by showing how even well-intentioned schools can reproduce inequity if they were never designed with girls’ full humanity in mind. The concept of net achievement is particularly relevant. High-stakes examination systems can produce academic success at the cost of mental health, suppressed identity and exhausted ambition. Nuamah’s warning that grit discourse can harm rather than help is a timely wake-up call for a generation raised on messages of individual perseverance.

The comparative cases also invite productive reflection. The South African attention to sexual violence and sanitary provision, the U.S. focus on racialised discipline and affirming role models, and the Ghanaian integration of moral discourse with leadership opportunities all offer points of comparison with Indian schools. Readers can ask what equivalent practices exist, or fail to exist, in their own educational environments. The emphasis on redistributing power rather than simply adding girls to existing structures aligns with broader conversations about caste, gender and institutional reform in India.

Finally, the book models a form of analysis that combines rigorous research with moral clarity. It does not lecture. It shows. For Indian youth engaged in education, gender justice or public policy, it provides both conceptual tools and a reminder that institutional redesign is possible. Feminist schools, in Nuamah’s sense, are not utopian inventions. They are practical responses to documented failures. Reading the book can help young Indians evaluate whether current policies and school practices are merely expanding access or genuinely cultivating the confidence, strategy and audacity that lasting achievement requires.

Sally A. Nuamah has written a book that treats the education of girls with the seriousness and complexity it deserves. By documenting the lived experiences of girls in three countries and insisting on institutional rather than individual solutions, she shifts the terms of debate. The concepts of feminist schools, net achievement and achievement-oriented identities give readers a vocabulary for diagnosing problems and imagining alternatives. The ethnographic detail keeps the argument grounded. The comparative design prevents parochialism.

The book is not without limitations. Its case studies are few, its quantitative analysis limited, and its attention to boys and certain forms of intersectionality incomplete. Yet these shortcomings do not erase its contribution. How Girls Achieve succeeds because it refuses both complacency and despair. It shows that schools can be redesigned, that power can be redistributed, and that girls can be taught not only to succeed within existing norms but to challenge those norms when they constrain human possibility. For researchers, educators, policymakers and engaged citizens, and especially for Indian youth seeking to understand the unfinished work of girls’ education, the book offers both a clear diagnosis and a practical invitation. The work of creating institutions that truly let girls achieve remains urgent. Nuamah has provided a blueprint worth taking seriously.

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