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In education, as in other respects, Ghana's position has been a lodestar from which other emerging nations chart their course. This pioneer status has attracted many eminent scholars to scrutinize the system at close quarters, and to examine the origins of Ghanaian students. Thus, within three years of the University of Ghana's inception Gustav Jahoda found that 66 per cent of its students came from the top 7 per cent of the working population, while farmers and manual workers were poorly represented. Subsequent scholars have reached similar results, although some have preferred to emphasize long-term trend toward a student body more representative of the population as a whole. Unfortunately, such optimism proves to have been somewhat premature. The debate has also illuminated the variety of interpretations of social stratification. Sociologists take the observed, inequality of life chances as axiomatic evidence of the existence of class differences. They replied that class has a psychological as well as a structural connotation, and he suggests that relative consensus over the value of education itself indicates the classlessness of Ghanaian society.

This article discusses social stratification and intellectual roles in the African American community in the U.S. The author notes the social role of African American intellectuals as symbols of racial worth and as instruments for racial protest and betterment. However, it is noted that part of the symbolic and instrumental function of the African American intellectual is the associated high socio-economic status. African Americans often self-identify with a socio-economic class well above that of the average of the African American community as a whole.

This article investigates the status of women in parliamentary elections. By the Representation of the People Act, 1918, women of thirty years of age and over were given the parliamentary franchise; and later in the same year the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act, 1918, made them eligible for election to the House of Commons. During the first ten years of this period these disappointing results might have been attributed, at least in part, to the limitation of women's suffrage to those of thirty and over. But the Representation of the People {Equal Franchise) Act, 1928, gave the vote to women on the same terms as to men; and since then women have been in a majority in the electorate. Nearly a quarter of a century has passed in these equalitarian conditions, and there have been six general elections; yet the participation of women in parliament has made little progress. The high-water mark was attained in 1945, when 24 women were elected to a House of Commons of 640 members--3 3/4 per cent of the total. The number fell to 21 in 1950 and to 17 in 1951, in a House of 625 members. Fewer than one member in 36 of the present House is a woman. Women are now in the majority in the electorate as a whole, and in all but a few of the individual constituencies: they should take steps to see that their local party organization is so constituted--or, if necessary, reconstituted--that it gives fair treatment to prospective candidates irrespective of sex. The remedy may take time and patience to apply; but it is in their own hands.