What motivates single women to migrate from northern Ghana to Accra?

ABSTRACT

In recent decades there has been a large migration stream of single women from the north to Accra in Ghana. Existing studies have focused on young migrant women’s livelihood strategies in their place of destination. However, once-married women – divorced and widowed women and neglected wives – also migrate, and their motivations for migration are less known. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative methods, the authors investigate the effects of gender norms, age, marital status, socio-economic status, and position in households on women’s decisions to migrate. The results revealed that migrant women from resource-poor households, regardless of age, marital status and position in households, commonly cited a gain in autonomy as an important motivation for their migration. From a differentiated perspective, young unmarried women aspired to prepare themselves for often expensive religious marriage ceremonies, whereas once-married women invest in their children’s education and build their own housing. By paying attention to the effects of gender norms, age, marital status, socio-economic status, and position in households on women’s decisions to migrate, the study illuminates the contradictory ways in which their migration practices are both shaped by and shape gender ideologies in parts of contemporary northern Ghana.

EDITORS:

• Arnt Fløysand
• Kerstin Potthoff

KEYWORDS:

• gender
• Ghana
• motivation
• north–south migration
• single women

Acknowledgements

We thank all participants in our research for their contribution. We also thank Professor Anke Niehof and Dr Hilje van der Horst for their comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. We are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers and the editor of Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography for their comments. Dr Peter Tamas provided us with useful assistance.

Notes

1. Bridewealth is what the groom’s family prepare and give to the bride’s family (Goody 1973).

2. Dowry, which the bride’s family prepares for the bride in her new home (Goody 1973), is institutionalized in many traditional societies in Africa. Goody (1973, 17) recognizes that dowry ‘supports female inheritance’. It is practised within Islamic and Christian cultures in Ghana.

3. ‘Nantoma’ is a pseudonym, as are all names of persons mentioned in this study.

4. The descriptions of three districts given by the respondents – Savelugu-Nanton District, Tolon-Kumbungu District, and Tamale Metropolitan District – do not appear to align exactly with the official record we were able to identify.

5. Findings from an exploratory survey among women of different ages in Nantoma indicated that the majority of girls and young women had never attended school.