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Abstract
Women’s empowerment discourses in Africa involve contradictory desires from women on one hand and society at large on the other. This article argues that the traditional validation mechanisms for women’s identities are crucial avenues for analysing both the conceptions and experiences of empowerment. Drawing on primary ethnographic data, I analyse paradoxes in women’s empowerment discourses in postcolonial Ghanaian societies, where neoliberal discourses thrive side-by-side with collectivist–socialist cultural ideals. Using an example of social capital, gained largely through mothering, I suggest that, because women’s relationships with capital are structured by local socio-cultural and global economic structures and relations, the theorisation and application of the concept of empowerment need to recognise the complicated relationships (with capital) that women negotiate on a daily basis.
Notes
1. This information is available on the official website of the African Union, www.africa-union.org.
2. Escobar, “The Invention of Development”; Escobar, Encountering Development; and Mbembe, On the Postcolony.
3. Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women.
4. For instance, see critiques from Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes”; and Nnaemeka, Female Circumcision and the Politics of Knowledge.
5. Mazrui, The Africans.
6. Oyěwùmí, “Family Bonds/Conceptual Binds.”
7. See, for instance, Bakare-Yusuf, “Beyond Determinism”; and Afonja, “Changing Patterns.”
8. Parpart et al., Rethinking Empowerment.
9. Boyd, quoted in Turshen, African Women, 2, 3 (emphasis added).
10. Parpart et al., Rethinking Empowerment, 4.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Turshen, African Women.
15. Batliwala, “The Meaning of Women’s Empowerment”; Kabeer, Reversed Realities; and Rowlands, Questioning Empowerment.
16. Turshen, African Women; and Parpart et al., Rethinking Empowerment.
17. Mayoux, “Questioning Virtuous Spirals.”
18. Ibid., 973 (emphasis added).
19. Collins, Black Feminist Thought; Parpart et al., Rethinking Empowerment; Rowlands, Questioning Empowerment; and Deveaux, “Feminism and Empowerment.”
20. Mohanty, Feminism without Borders; and Win, “Not Very Poor.”
21. Assimeng, Social Structure.
22. These are discussed later in the paper.
23. Nukunya, Tradition and Change.
24. These rites are commonly practised in Ghana and as such constitute common knowledge in the country.
25. Currently such status can be inferred from public praise given to mothers during child-naming ceremonies. See Stoeltje, “Asante Queen Mothers”; Oyěwùmí, “Family Bonds/Conceptual Binds”; and Amadiume, Re-inventing Africa.
26. Salm and Falola, Culture and Customs.
27. This is an expression for emphasis.
28. Van der Geest, “‘I want to Go!’”
29. Hooks, Feminist theory.
30. This phrase was made popular by Dr. Kwegyir Aggrey, an educationist and missionary in the then Gold Coast (now Ghana), who believed in educating women for development.
31. Women’s rights groups, NGOs and the media have all variously used these slogans and campaigns to encourage girl-child education in Ghana. Such campaigns and other factors have yielded positive results as far as girls’ enrolment in schools is concerned.
32. It is to be noted that I have presented two systems here for purposes of analysing binary discourses. I have thus occluded the nuances in similarities and differences between the two. I also treat them as exclusive when they mutually reinforce each other in reality.
33. Funerals for one’s relatives and eventually at one’s own funeral.
34. Because marriage is understood to be a communal affair, a marriage contract is anything but between individuals. The marriage contract is between families, who are part of clans and villages. One is therefore never married to an individual in the traditional sense in which marriage operates; one is married to a family or village.
35. Having grown up in this part of Ghana, I am also very familiar with this practice.
36. Sugar is the most common gift given to Muslims in the region fasting during the time of Ramadan. It is meant to contribute to preparations for breaking the fast at the end of the day. It is used as a sweetener for porridge, which is a typical first course meal for breaking fast in the northern sector of the country.
37. See also Bawa, “Women’s Rights.” By ‘relations’ here I am referring to social relationships and relatives that ensure that a woman has land or help to improve her access to land.
38. See more discussions on empowerment and political representation in Bawa and Sanyare, “Women’s Participation.”
39. I am aware that both local and global spheres in themselves encompass multiple spheres that can further complicate the analyses I’m offering here. ‘Local’, for instance, here refers to the national, country-level sphere, which encompasses ethnic and tribal spheres.