In recent years heightened attention has been directed towards the connections between schooling and local communities in sub-Saharan Africa. While community participation in school management has been emphasized as a strategy to promote sustainable development and improve quality education in sub-Saharan Africa, in practice this strategy has reproduced power hierarchies at the community-level. Furthermore, it has had limited impact for advancing gender equality because community participation in sub-Saharan Africa is not framed to encompass the dynamics of power that exist at the community level and how societal structures govern how community members participate: specifically girls and women. In this paper, I outline the gendered effects of community participation in schooling and alternative methods of participation using specific case studies from West Africa.