Doing Feminism on the Street: Culture, Media Perspectives, and Neo-Gender Groups in Ghana

GENEVIEVE NRENZAH

Abstract

This study examines a debate that sparked a national conversation between two divergent women’s groups in Ghana—Pepper Dem Ministries (PDM) and Sugar Dem Ghana (SDG). Before reporting findings from taking their discourses on the definition of a woman to the streets of Madina and Legon, the paper briefly summarizes feminist perspectives in the West and notes homogeneity and heterogeneity of women’s experiences around the globe. It zooms in on feminism in Africa and Ghana, examining the definition of a woman in traditional Ghanaian culture, popular music, literature, knowledge production, media, and religion. The author argues that there are multiple feminisms with relatively contextual variations in defining a woman, yet all geared towards making society masculine as the debate revolves around patriarchy, i.e., “peppering” and “sugaring” men at the expense of focus on women. Findings indicate that PDM and SDG neo-feminist groups diverge fundamentally in the primary focus of their activism. They also differ in their commitment to advocating for all women by prioritizing an intersectional approach in their engagement. Participants from the Madina Market and the University of Ghana at Legon supported both groups. For some PDM seems too “strong” and is tagged as Western in orientation and elitist as educated folks mainly support it. In contrast, a mixed-bag of the participants appear to accept SDG. Pro-SDG supporters consider their model as the norm in Ghana.

Keywords: Neo-feminism, gender roles, Africa, Ghana, culture, perspectives

Introduction

Early 2018 the long-standing argument about a woman’s place in the kitchen was revivified when Ace Ankomah, a well-known legal practitioner, offered a piece of marriage advice to his friend. He wrote in a social media post, “The responsibility of a husband is to provide money for the home while the wife is to ensure that the home is properly managed with food on the table always.”^[1] The post did not go down well with Dela Goldheart, a member of Pepper Dem Ministries (PDM), a neo-feminist group, who posted in the form of an indirect reply, “If you want to praise your slaving or hardworking or loving wife, whatever adjective you find suitable, please go ahead without suggesting that she defines what womanhood totally entails.”^[2]

The exchange of words between Dela and Ace would later metamorphose into a full-blown public debate on mainstream traditional and social media about women’s roles and the definition of “woman” in Ghanaian society. Several Ghanaians took to social media platforms to condemn the neo-feminist group PDM for endorsing Dela’s message and her likening a woman’s cooking to slavery. Some defended the group and opined that harmful stereotypes and roles for women needed to be redefined.^[3] Interestingly, another group, Sugar Dem Ghana (SDG), emerged to counter the stance of PDM.

This paper examines the debate that sparked national conversation and the two groups at the center of the controversy by taking their discourses to the streets of Madina^[4] and Legon.^[5] We analyze the neo-feminist perspectives in Ghana and trace the feminist traditions in the West, noting the homogeneity and the heterogeneities among feminisms worldwide. The essay then zooms in on feminism in Africa and neo-feminists in Ghana. We argue that there are multiple feminisms, relatively contextual variations in defining a woman, yet all still gear towards making society masculine in that the debates still revolve around patriarchy. For example, debates of these two groups focus on “peppering or sugaring” men at the expense of focusing on women. Instead of placing women at the center of the conversation and sensitizing the Ghanaian society into unlearning the absolved patriarchal “right” of men, the discussion seems to suggest a message and subtle accentuation of the “inevitable” unchangeable status of men in Ghanaian society. Moreover, some women defend the “manly” position of men to their own detriment. These two groups set the pace for using current media trends to push forward their womanist agenda in a super mediatized Ghana. In what ensues, we discuss gender roles, feminism, and culture.

Defining Gender Roles, Feminism, and Culture

Perceptions and Representations of Womanhood in Africa and Ghana

Yeshiareg Dejene has harangued that socially constructed roles, relationships, and learned behavior of men and women shape gender relations^[6] then gradually become the norm with time. According to Dejene, these social constructions vary from society to society; nevertheless, considering Ghana’s situation as determined through this research, gender roles are unwittingly defined and demarcated—men and women are unconsciously allocated functions wrapped in culture and religion as socially constructed roles.

The perceived social construction has yielded a culture of adverse representations of women and womanhood in traditional Ghanaian culture, popular music, literature, media, government, and other expressive forms. Charles Gyan, Eunice Abbey, and Michael Baffoe, writing about traditions and traditional societies in Ghana, analyzed Akan proverbs to interrogate the representation of women in this aspect of Ghanaian culture. They opined that proverbs reflect ideas and definitions of women and their roles and argue that women are defined as being dependent on men, weak, childish, and irresponsible, among other sexist tropes. Concerning marriage, they highlight the belief that women are incomplete without a husband, citing proverbs such as, “An unmarried woman is like a cloth in the market, but a married woman is the property of her husband” and “When a woman gets married without knowing how to do house chores, her soup is continuously poured into a water pot and showed to the public.”^[7] These proverbs express beliefs of women being nothing unless they have men in their lives, and even when they end up marrying, they must be all-around perfect in household chores or publicly disgraced, all because of a man. Male-controlled roles in the traditions thus objectify and define women as wives and insignificant unless they come under the control of men in marriage. This attitude towards women cuts across all facets of society.

Akosua Adomako Ampofo and Awo Mana Asiedu explore gendered stereotypes of women in popular music and found that contemporary music and videos have continued in a tradition of objectifying, infantilizing, and overly sexualizing women.^[8] The somewhat positive portrayals of women include their submissiveness, caring and hospitable nature, and their roles as virtuous wives and mothers.^[9] Essentially, similar trends can be observed in popular music as womanhood continues to be defined by motherhood along with damaging stereotypes that perpetuate the justifications for a patriarchal society. Nana Akua Anyidoho, Cynthia Addoquaye, and Mawuli Adjei, Ernest Appiah, Abena A. Yeboah-Banin, Aba Crentsil, Joseph Oduro-Frimpong, Adobe Owusu and Dzifa Torkorley examined the representation of women in novels and movies. They reported that Ghanaian literature has grossly defined ideal womanhood in relation to women’s role as wives and mothers. The negative stereotypes and narratives of women in literature render them as sexual objects and, sometimes, as liberators and proponents for women’s emancipation.^[10]

Male scholars do not make the woman’s plight better by the negative and stereotypical images of women they paint. Anyidoho and collaborators note Abena Busia’s critique of Ayi Kwei Armah’s in Busia’s essay “Parasites and Prophets”; they assert, “There are two traditions of oppositions governing the portrayal of women in the novels which concern us here, women as wholesome whores or victimized or virtuous virgins, and women as nurturing earth mothers or destructive Jezebels.”^[11] This thinking is along the same line as the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard who claimed that women are just aesthetic beings and that man alone can attain higher ethical and religious levels of existence.^[12] Armah continued, asserting that women are “’inferior and countless.’”^[13] The argument is made and sustained by men, mainly at the controlling helm of positions in society. What better way to hold on to falsehood than to continue controlling the others? Simone de Beauvoir envisaged this and emphasized that “women, or the female sex, were made ‘the other’ by men who defined the norm and the standard of humans as male.... [W]omen were consequently sub-human.”^[14] Social and cultural behaviors confirm Beauvoir’s argument.

Feminist Perspectives in the West

In the sphere of knowledge, women were considered unfit to have knowledge, let alone produce or share it. Lorraine Code indicates Western male thinkers consistently dismissed women’s abilities and contributions. These intellectuals envisaged women as entities who could not coordinate knowledge. Aristotle declared the limitations of women’s cognitive capacities while J. J. Rousseau maintained that men and women should be educated differently because of women’s inferiority in reason, and because they have the propensity to be dragged down by their sensual natures.^[15] The exclusion of women from the delimitation of a fully human and thinking being also extended to religion. Thus, for Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, feminists must “investigate how centuries of women’s exclusion from the academy and institutionalized religion can be undone.”^[16] Linda Woodhead invites us to redefine womanhood and to embrace it in theology.^[17] Consequently, western feminist thinkers have had to counter the misconception about women’s inferior intelligence on top of all the other discriminations.

Beauvoir was correct in maintaining that “representation of the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.”^[18] Beauvoir succinctly summarizes the role of men in the historical exclusion and oppression of women in her statement, “the whole of feminine history has been man-made. Just as in America, there is no Negro problem, but rather a white problem; just as anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem, it is our problem; so the woman problem has always been a man problem.”^[19] Indeed, Western feminists have followed the tradition of analyzing the male-dominated society that marginalizes them and have argued for women’s value, dignity, and place in all spheres of societal life. While African and Ghanaian women’s movements and feminist ideologies can draw on/benefit from/link to western feminisms, it is debatable the extent to which Western feminisms are functional for Ghanaian women. To assume that Western feminisms will apply to other contexts, such as the Ghanaian context, will imply that a woman is a woman everywhere, that “woman” is a universal category, rather than a historical, geopolitical, and contextual one. Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan have reviewed “global womanism” for its belief in a universal category and the subsequent belief in universal solutions.^[20] They show that Western feminism, even when it comes from black and brown women imposes essentialist notions of bodies and sexuality and falls into imperial tropes.^[21] It is, therefore, not strange when in siding with Chandra Mohanty they postulate that “”sisterhood cannot be assumed based on gender; it must be forged in concrete historical and political practice and analysis.’”^[22] In essence, a transnational approach to women’s issues across the world will not make much sense. In that spirit, discussing the plight of women in Africa by African feminists and, to an extent, apologists, is what I examine next.

Gender, Womanhood, and Feminism in Africa

African feminists have argued in their own right that Western feminism assumes that gender and womanhood are categories that are universally rigid, biological, and valid. Even if a universal womanhood applied to women in the West, nonetheless, it fails to apply to African contexts that, for the most part, have had Western ideas imposed on them through globalization and, historically, through colonialism, slavery, and missionary Christianity. Articulations of African feminisms thus grapple with this history.

In many pre-colonial indigenous African societies, gender was not visibly defined, and neither were gender roles. Ifi Amadiume studied Indigenous Igbo gender arrangements in southeastern Nigeria and maintained that in pre-colonial Igbo society, sex and gender did not necessarily coincide as Western thought assumes. There were no asymmetrical relationships between males and females. She affirms that roles were neither rigidly masculinized nor feminized and, thus, breaking gender rules was not stigmatized.^[23] Men and women alike farmed and went to wars, as did Yaa Asantewaa queen of Ejisu, Queen Eyleuka of Ethiopia, Queen Lobamba of Kuba (Congo), Princess Nang’oma of Bululi (Uganda), Queen Rangita of Madagascar, and Queen Nzinga of Angola.^[24] Many women had control of life choices without social harassment, as roles were not gender specific. The over-time learned social constructs make African women feel boxed somehow. Take, for instance, a daily humiliation one of my respondents experienced as an unmarried Akan woman.

For some reason, men especially disrespect me for being single and progressive. I bought a parcel of land and started building a house; one day, I passed by my sister’s house after going to the land. She said, “I am unmarried and a successful career woman.” When my brother in law heard that I am building a house, he asked me in my face, “Why are you behaving like a man? Why not get yourself a husband and stop behaving like a man?” This really infuriated me but daily in my life that is the price I pay for being single and successful.^[25]

Meanwhile, indigenous concepts such as “male daughters” and “female husbands” are evidence of the flexible nature of gender among Africans and stand in stark contrast to Western binary gender ideas.^[26] Subsequently, restrictive, unliberated, sometimes silent gender roles in Ghana are Western and imported social constructs.

The Western dual sex/gender system and the corresponding meanings have historically been imposed on Africans through colonialism and the spread of mission Christianity. The British Empire is an important example, as it boasted an expansion, or colonization, in much of Africa by the end of the 19^th century. From Cairo to Cape Town, the British impacted the land and labor of Africans and societal organizations and meanings around race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender. Moreover, British missionaries had already been in Africa for a century before these missions being set up in West Africa as early as 1805.^[27] Significantly, women’s missions were tasked with advancing the doctrines of “true womanhood,” which prescribed marriage and specific family ideals.^[28] In Ghana, early missions like the Basel Mission also had women’s missions, which aimed to spread proper Christian femininity by example as well through girls’ education.^[29] In Nigeria, Christian education also sought to reform the Yoruba family structure and redefine women and mothers as domestic caregivers to serve as the foundation of Christian families.^[30] Thus, colonial conceptualizations that arrange society along strict heterosexual and patriarchal lines had to be imported into Africa, where gender often was more pluralistic and fluid.^[31]

Indeed, gender in Africa has no basis in biology or matter as a social category at all. Amadiume emphasizes that “biological” sex did not necessarily correspond to ideological gender across the continent.^[32] Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí questions the universality of gender categories across the world and differentiates between Western feminism and African feminism using the Yoruba of Nigeria to advance the cause in her book The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourse.^[33]

For Oyěwùmí, Western feminism, seen as an antidote for healing the world of male dominance, is not applicable in the African situation. She notes that the social practice such as division of labor, kinship, professions, and monarchical structures among the Yoruba was ordered according to lineage and not gender. Assigning gender roles for Oyěwùmí is “imposition of an alien model that distorts the reality and leads to false simplification of social roles and relationships.”^[34] In most African societies, seniority of a man/woman “orders and divides” them. Seniority is relative and context-dependent, and it cuts through the distinction of wealth, rank, and sex. Her work deals with questions such as: Can gender or indeed patriarchy be applied to a non-Euro-American culture? Can we assume that social relations in all societies are organized around biological sex differences? Is the female body inherently subordinate to the male body? The answer to these questions will all be “no,” in that in constructing a Yoruba sense of feminism, Oyěwùmí argues “gender has not been a fundamental issue among African women and biology was not used in establishing social relations, subjectivity, positioning and hierarchy,” unlike in Western societies.^[35] Fundamentally, the assumption of Western feminism that women have always been viewed as powerless, helpless, and disadvantaged does not necessarily apply to pre-colonial Africa. However, African societies’ gendering is crucial because colonialism also entrenched a patriarchal hierarchy between men and women that still has devastating legacies today. Oyěwùmí writes that not only were gender systems imposed on Yoruba but also that the newly categorized “women” were subsequently ousted from the powerful positions they occupied as rulers and traders. Moreover, colonial wage and taxation systems were used to solidify men’s power over women. Even in cases of indigenous Yoruba gods that were gendered, power was given to masculinized gods while feminine gods were disempowered.^[36] African women thus occupied “colonialism’s most degraded category” as “native women.”^[37] Axille Coetzee and Louise du Toit add a sexual dimension to the “native woman” who was excluded from humanity twice, noting the native woman as also being viewed as sexually deviant, and thereby “unrapable under colonial rule.”^[38] Coetzee and du Toit argue that sexual violence against women in South Africa today is a direct legacy of the colonial gender restructuring that thoroughly subjugated African women.^[39]

Lastly, Oyěwùmí makes essential arguments about the differences in gender ideology and social organization between the West and Africa and about differences in modes of knowing as it applies to these questions. Elizabeth Spelman postulates that the oppression of women is found in the “the meanings assigned to having a woman’s body by male oppressors” and oppression of black people has “been linked to the meanings assigned to having a black body by white oppressors.”^[40] This thought of biology, according to Oyěwùmí, is an attribute of European intellectual history. Categories, hierarchies on visual modes, and binary distinctions—male and female, white and black, homosexual and heterosexual, and others—are Western epistemes embedded in their worldview. In essence, Oyěwùmí’s perspective is that “worldview” is appropriate for Europeans while “worldsense” better matches the African way of knowing.^[41] These are two categories that should not be conflated, as is the case in ways women’s experiences around the world have been generalized.

For Sylvia Tamale, the process of colonization largely erased and repressed indigenous knowledge systems and raised the markedly patriarchal, Christian-centric, and heteronormative Eurocentric one onto the pedestal of universality and objectivity.^[42] Disputations of multiple universalisms of women as painted by African feminist scholars depict that the position of Ghanaian and African women currently is a result of the legacy of Christianity and colonialism. The duo dominated the world with its philosophy of patriarchy, making it seem as if all women have like-experience. In contrast, women in Africa wielded power before the dawn of both Christianity as a European religion and colonization as a practice. In what follows, we will discuss these two events among reflections on the definition of a woman in debate of Ghanaian neo-women’s groups and the general social definition of women in Ghana.

Ghanaian Feminism and Neo-Women’s Movement Trends: Precursors to Pepper Dem Ministries and Sugar Dem Ghana

Feminism is a term many women, due to fear of victimization, would rather shelve if even they believe in and practice its precepts. Susan Arndt cites the exception of Ghanaian author Ama Ata Aidoo’s proclamation of herself as a feminist. When queried about feminism Aidoo asserted that:

when people ask me rather bluntly, now and then, whether I am feminist, I not only answer yes, but I go on to insist that every woman and every man should be feminist—especially if they believe that Africans should take charge of African land, African wealth, African lives and the burden of African development.^[43]

Her declaration stands at odds with the overall stigma of feminism in Ghana. Arndt writes that feminism in Africa, in general, is often associated with “hatred of men, penis envy, the non-acceptance of African traditions, the fundamental rejection of marriage and motherhood, the favoring of lesbian love and endeavor to invert the relationship of the genders.”^[44]

The negative tag assigned to women who call themselves feminists is probably the basis for Florence Dolphyne Abena (an academic who also dedicated her life to the emancipation of women in Ghana and elsewhere) never viewing herself as a feminist. Abena sees “feminist” as a term that “evokes the image of an aggressive woman who, in the same breath, speaks of a woman’s right to education and professional training, right to equal pay for work of equal value, to right to vote and be voted for and so on.”^[45] Instead of confronting the term with a view towards demystifying it for others to follow, Abena describes what she stands for and leaves to whosoever uses her acts to decide who she is. In the same vein, Ama Ata Aidoo, Arndt’s noted example, corroborates the view that the label feminism evokes a negative attitude and adds that it is regarded as “something that has been imported into Africa to ruin the excellent relationship between African women and African men.”^[46] Africans who espouse feminist ideals grounded in decolonization and African values have thus sought to devise alternatives to the term “feminism” with examples including womanism, stiwanism, motherism, femalism, and nego-feminism.^[47] Regardless of the labels, African and Ghanaian women continue to champion the ideals they stand for and believe in through diverse channels.

Women’s movements and feminist activism gained new momentum in Ghana in the 1990s, at the beginning of a new democratic era. The National Council on Women and Development (NCWD) and December 31 Women’s Movement, led by Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, largely dominated work in Ghana for more than fifteen years. Various NGOs, including FIDA-Ghana, International Federation of Women Lawyers-Ghana, The Ark Foundation, and Leadership Advocacy for Women in Africa (LAWA-Ghana, Incorporated) did important work on a range of women’s concerns from criminalizing harmful cultural practices, like FGM and trokosi, to advocating to end intimate partner violence against women.^[48]

In the early 2000s, several coalitions and networks also formed around specific issues to push policymakers to take action on women’s rights. These include Sister’s Keeper (formed in 2001 in response to serial killings of women in and around Accra) and NETRIGHT (the Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana, formed in 1999 to promote gender equality). The Gender Violence Survivor’s Support Network (GVSSN) formed in 2001. The Coalition on Domestic Violence Legislation formed in 2003 with a singular aim of passing a Domestic Violence Bill and criminalizing marital rape, and the Coalition on the Women’s Manifesto for Ghana (a 2003/2004 coalition) formed from among stakeholders involved in producing the manifesto to focus attention on gender issues.^[49] Gender activism in Ghana has utilized a broad range of strategies and operated across all levels—from the district and regional to urban, rural, continental, and global. They have written, lobbied, protested, and held public discourses in local languages through radio, TV, faith-based organizations, and internet forums.^[50] PDM and SDG are thus a continuation of this work. The emerging era has given them easy access to new social media trends to push gender activism forward.

The point in discussing these two groups is to make sense of their opposing positions, not only their stance on “cooking” but also their advocacy for women’s advancement and empowerment. Details of the arguments these two groups are making, their definitions of a woman’s place in Ghanaian society, and the way forward for women’s emancipation are what concern us in this endeavor. The project investigated the groups’ activities and noted that they highly publicize themselves using their social media platforms, such as Facebook. They also use traditional media houses such as Class 91.3 FM and Citi 97.3 FM, as PDM does to “facilitate learning, unlearning and re-learning,” or waging their battles against inequality to institutionalize equity for all. Studies have shown that Ghanaian women across rural and urban spaces, educational backgrounds, and socio-economic standings agree that women still lag in almost all spheres of public life—from political decision-making to sexual and reproductive rights.^[51] This study found the significant difference between these groups is their approach to equity for women and how the Ghanaian populace feels about them.

Pepper Dem Ministries (PDM)

Pepper Dem Ministries is an intransigent feminist advocacy group formed on September 6, 2017, to put gender on Ghana’s political and social plan. A group of seven women, namely Efe Plange, Louise Carol Donkor, Ama Opoku Agyemang, Hetty Mercer, Noelyne Mensah, Felicity Nelson, and Efua Sintim, formed PDM. It is a well-organized and coordinated group of educated women who aim to “facilitate learning, unlearning and re-learning of the narratives both males and females have been operating by in Ghana to establish a better approach to socialization.”^[52] Membership cuts across the social divide but comprises highly educated women of the upper-middle class and middle class. The group christened themselves “PDM” because they sought to engage with the most uncomfortable and unpopular issues in the Ghanaian socio-cultural space. Pepper, according to them, is both a metaphor for truth and a symbol of inequality or uneven development. From its inception, PDM has used social media to probe, interrogate, educate, and flip the gender script by calculatingly raising consciousness amongst Ghanaians on the routine traditional toxic gender narratives that enable inequalities to prevail. PDM proponents are noted for being radical, especially regarding the role of women at home and in the workplace. The group stresses women’s human rights, thus promoting gender equality and highlighting violence and abuse against women to secure sustainable development for future generations.

PDM uses its Facebook page and other media engagements to push its agenda and create discussions to challenge and reject certain deep-rooted gender norms and structures in the Ghanaian society that affect women and, in a subtle way, men as well. An example is a recent post that calls the insult “driving like a woman” into question and probes readers to recognize the sexism and patriarchy behind such sayings.^[53] Furthermore, PDM uses its platform on Facebook to educate the public on consent and sexual violence. Offline, PDM leads projects on sexual harassment education in schools and communities and advocates for gender-sensitive educational curricula and policies to integrate gender and development.

Sugar Dem Ghana (SDG)

Sugar Dem Ghana is a counter-feminist group established in response to the debates that Pepper Dem Ministries spurred. The group’s founder is Afia Pokua, also known as Vim Lady, alongside other media personalities such as Nana Ama Anamoah and Maame Akua. Even though this group’s leadership is educated, membership is heavily grassroots and mostly made up of uneducated and semi-illiterate women, mainly in the working-class and lower classes, to truthfully tumble the bottle.

SDG’s purpose is to engage in dialogue with men to gain their support in the collective work of helping empower women. In an interview, SDG’s founder Pokua stated, “We have been fighting with men for equality, and we have not gotten anywhere. We are still struggling. We have made progress but not as much progress that we desire to make.”^[54] The concept behind the group is to attain women’s empowerment through open and genuine conversation with men, instead of antagonizing them. As opposed to pepper, the idea of sugar in the group’s name comes from this position of not antagonizing men, as Pokua believes that pampering men is the better way of achieving women’s advancement. Members of SDG have also upheld the role of women as helpers to men and do not believe in competing with men for power; instead, they negotiate with them to push their cause for women. Similar to their counterparts, SDG also uses the media, both mainstream and social, to publicize their events and projects. One of its Facebook page posts reads, “I am a gender and human rights activist. A wife, mother, daughter, sister, and a friend.... A beautiful and educated ‘slave.’ I love to cook and I cook everything.... I like soups, stews, and little baking.”^[55] She describes her labor of love for her family and asserts that men and women have unique roles in the post. Pokua concludes by calling on both men and women to shower each other with love. The SDG Facebook site shows many posts glorifying men, a gig to sugar them to receive pampering in return. Some posts report their philanthropic outreach and projects such as free breast cancer screening, supporting the women’s football team, free cookouts to serve men, free financial literacy talks for illiterate market women, and distributing free sanitary pads to schoolchildren.

PDM often is accused of adopting a Western feminist stance, often is perceived as not Ghanaian or as foreign, to tackle the first issue. At the same time, SDG seems to support the so-called Ghanaian and African accepted norms of gender. In evaluating the two groups, what comes out is that they are trying to fit into the broader discourses of feminism within the Ghanaian context and at the same time define the place of women in such a society. One key member of SDG, Nana Adwoa, for example, explained her version of feminism as finally about equality for women in society:

The advocacy of women’s rights is on the ground of the equality of sexes. A Feminist is simply a person who supports feminism…. Being a feminist does not make a woman a man-hater. No. We believe in fighting for equal rights…. However, this does not mean women should ride on top of men or even victimize them. My most significant achievement as a feminist is reaching out to people who need physical and emotional help. You cannot sit on social media platforms and call yourself a feminist when the more significant work is on the field. How many people in the villages have access to social media? Tough life is out there. Make an impact and stop the men-hate. Feminism is not about bringing men down but rather fighting for equal rights.^[56]

For a moment, it would seem as if the two groups are fighting for the exact cause, then comes to the insinuative statement that suggests the others are trying to place themselves above men. There is a sharp disparity in focus and in regard to what PDM is pursuing. For them, in answering who they are as a group and what they seek for women in society, they emphasize overcoming socialization that negatively affects women:

The purpose of our probing, interrogating, and theorizing is to facilitate learning, unlearning, and re-learning of the narratives both males and females have been operating by to establish a better approach to our socialization. The issues we technically address are certain ingrained gender norms and how partial they can be against women. Although we highlight that these narratives are more dangerous for women, we do not lose sight of the many subtle ways these narratives affect men too.^[57]

PDM sees a woman and a man as equal. Socially, men and women ought to be able to pursue whatever endeavor they so wish for, without fear of victimization. Jobs or tasks should not be tied to a particular sex under his or her gender and chores such as cooking, and both sexes can perform the cleaning as none of the sexes was born with a ladle or broom in hand. The PDM standpoint is for women in general, especially the Ghanaian woman, to learn to unlearn these social constructs and rise above colonial cultural practices that enslave them to do or behave in specific ways to be accepted. Both groups agree that women are yet to be fully empowered in all aspects of their lives in Ghana. Opinions from these neo-feminist groups (PDM and SDG) are taken to the streets of Legon and Madina. The derived data on the normative roles of women are based on culture, religion, lay perspectives, and others.

Feminism, Religion, and Culture in Analysis of PDM/SDG: Narratives from Madina Market and Legon

The Berlin conference of 1884 led to the partitioning of Africa in an attempt to widen the geographical and political territories^[58] of the Western countries involved. It also meant the subjugation of the Africa people. Western and European social systems, unlike others, are based on Judeo-Christian perspectives.^[59] Furthermore, once they gained control, European values and ways of life were imposed on Africans through force. This encounter somehow makes it seem as if Ghana and other African nations have theoretically been turned into Judeo-Christian countries. The 2010 Ghana housing and population census noted Christianity as having the highest number of participants at 71.2 percent, indicating Ghana has seen the previously dominant traditional religion drop to a mere 5.3 percent, with Islam at 17.6 percent.^[60] Meanwhile, the religion statistics are not convincing because of the fluid nature of the religious field. African Traditional Religion (ATR), for example, does not operates on the scale of membership. It is a utility-based religion and adherents subscribe as needed. In addition, the historical demonization of ATR requires that people simply respond to the question on religion by choosing from among either one or the other of the religious traditions “in vogue” (Christianity or Islam). Additionally, an average Ghanaian engages two or three religious traditions. She/he would claim to be a member of a Christian church but will consult with and ATR priest or a Muslim Mallam (spiritualist) and these visits could be one time, consistent, or even permanent. In this case the person subscribes to three traditions but will only mention the one to which “civilized” Ghanaians claim to belong. The two, supposedly, leading religious groups in Ghana influence the collected data, as participants would often cite the Bible/Qur’an in backing or rejecting the PDM or SDG positions.

Most of the participants I note base their opinions about the feminist groups on quotations from the Christian Bible or Muslim Qur’an before stepping down to say our culture and traditions. Citations such as Ephesians 5:22-23, “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord,” 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 14 were cited mainly by Christians in justifying that women must be subordinate to men. Some cited Qur’an 4.34 “Men stand superior to women in that God…” as the basis of privileging one group over the other. Consequently, in doing feminism on the street, we analyze narratives from the two groups on the roles and definition of a Ghanaian woman through the lens of Christianity, Islam, and Ghanaian culture and traditions. We interviewed 40 participants aged 18-60 years, 20 men and 20 women from Madina and Legon asking questions such as: “What is the definition of a Ghanaian woman?” “What are the Ghanaian gender roles?” “In other words, are roles assigned based on gender, culture or religion?” “Are you religious?” “What do you make of the PDM and SDG?” These and other follow-up questions were included in the interviews. Out of that 40 interviewees, 30 percent from both sites have feminist ideas, and 70 percent hold sexist, patriarchal philosophies that seem to be supported by their religious orientation and cultural values.

Narratives from Madina Market and Legon

Religious narratives captured during the interviews are as follows:

Issue of Madina has the view that “God did not say you should be equal with men; women must be subordinate to men. God will always bless women who live virtuous lives by humbling themselves to their husbands. Hence, asking for equality is going against God.”^[61] Mahama also shares this view and even compares God to man, saying, “if you serve and respect your husband it is the same as serving God. The Bible says the head of the woman is man. Sarah served Abraham and her Lord. This revelation can only be seen by the children of God.”^[62] While the first two respondents above were from men, another interesting religious view was from a woman; she said, “In the Bible and also the Qur’an, God instructed men to head their families; by God’s divine and wise arrangement, the man has been assigned to protect and provide for the woman. What good will it do a woman to want to be same with the one assigned to protect and provide for her?”^[63]

The views expressed above and others show that about 70 percent of the participants often use religion to divide the sexes and apportion sex roles in Ghana. Men and women use religion to substantiate their view that women have been divinely assigned the second position to men, and among this group of respondents both sexes applaud this assertion. One opinionated religious participant Dabo ended his conversation with me stressing, “The fact that a woman calls herself a feminist means that she is arrogant, saucy, proud and uncompromising. Being a professional does not give license to women to disrespect their spouses. A woman parading herself as a feminist is against God.”^[64]

We also note that the responses from some participants tried to accentuate male dominance as normative by situating it within the cultural practices of the Ghanaians. Mary, who is a woman from Legon, informed me during the interview that,

I hear some “career women” are advocating for marriage equality, and I do not even understand where they got the idea of equality from. Since time immemorial, that is how it has been—men are the heads of their households. Those women who think otherwise should rescind their decision because no Ghanaian man will marry a woman who always wants to be at the same level with him at home and in the office. A woman should be below a man, which is a simple unchangeable fact. It is what is and has been the case with our grandmothers.^[65]

Similar to Mary, Dennis said,

Women were created to be short people and will forever remain short. Women have to look up to men to provide for their needs constantly, and men always have to stretch out their necks to look down on the women by providing their needs. A woman must not try to be a man by going to school, getting a job, and owning a house. I do not mean the school is terrible, but the outcome of schooling makes some women behave as if they wear the pants. If even a woman has money, she must entrust it to her man’s hands for the man to manage it and provide for her.^[66]

Peter, a student at Legon, expressed the view that “The PDM is a disgrace to their families. Why should I marry a woman and then cook, wash, and bathe a baby? She must take care of my home, the children, and me…. I will never do any household chores so long as I am married. It is a tradition; if PDM women do not know, they should go and ask their mothers.”^[67] Cici also supported the dominant view of women being subordinates saying, “I saw my mother doing everything in the house all my life. So why will I do it differently? I am a woman, not a man, so for me, the SDG precepts resonate with me.”^[68] The views from some participants on PDM and SDG are sharp and strong, each inflexible, but interestingly, other participants commented about the Ghanaian societal and cultural definition of women in pre-colonial times.

For Dora, the introduction of foreign cultures has messed the Ghanaians up. She postulates, “My grandma told me that women used to be very powerful before the white people came. They have come to spoil everything with their church, so do not go there. If you do not go there, you will not be lectured to submit to a man to develop yourself as a person, not as a woman.”^[69] This statement is somehow in line with Rosemond’s who had said, “It’s unique that some women want to protect men by reducing a debate that affects women to cooking. The narrow, dull woman who cannot focus on what is significant and what is not. Women and girls are being raped by family members and strangers every day; they are battered, butchered, and shot by men in the name of relationship or marriage and so this plight of women should not be reduced to whether to cook or not…. Who made it a duty for women to serve men anyway?”^[70]

From this broader discussion on the street, we turn to the paper’s core, reflecting on the two neo-women’s movements in vogue in Ghana and pointing to countless others that began in the 1990s and 2000s. PDM and SDG present fresh, young examples of contemporary women’s movements in Ghana, especially current media use trends. In evaluating the two groups in the light of the data collected, we found out that the groups differ fundamentally in the primary focus of their activism. While PDM aims to secure a more just society for women by changing and challenging familiar gender narratives, SDG dedicates most of its energy to promoting women’s economic development initiatives to attain the same goal.

Dzodzi Tsikata has written that women’s movement organizations in Ghana in the 1990s tended to be less political and more short-term project-based in their activities and activism due to a wave of “NGO-ization” that lessened the impact of movements worldwide.^[71] In conversation, Tsikata further elaborated that “gender activists are accepted as long as they focus on programs such as credit for women, income generation projects and girls’ education, and couch their struggles in terms of welfare or national development. Once they broach questions of power relations or injustices, they are accused of being elitist and influenced by foreign ideas that are alien to African culture.”^[72] Although Tsikata made these assertions more than a decade before PDM and SDG emerged, they still ring true. With its emphasis on analyzing narratives and revealing their patriarchal and sexist nature, PDM challenges power relations and receives backlash. The popular opinion is that PDM’s approach is too harsh, but PDM aligns itself with African feminisms that aim to deconstruct and decolonize oppressive structures. On the other hand, SDG focuses on women’s economic empowerment and falls into the same trend of Ghana women’s movements in the 1990s that had to shy away from challenging power relations to operate peacefully. Additionally, by SDG affirming women’s role as family cooks, they stray further away from African feminisms that challenge Western-imposed gender norms and ideas of womanhood.

Pepper Dem Ministries and Sugar Dem Ghana also differ in their commitment to advocating for all women by prioritizing an intersectional approach in their activism. Their arguments fall flat when cues are taken for instance, from Black Feminist Thought and African Feminisms. The two assessments emphasize the importance of recognizing multiple axes of oppression that black/African women face. Tamale quotes Audre Lorde, who argued, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not lead single-issue lives.”^[73] She succinctly articulates this position by noting that, one shoe does not fit all in dealing with gender issues around the world. PDM and SDG both fall into the trap by playing the villain in fighting for “all women.” Historically, Ghana’s women’s movement concerned itself with a range of issues. The Women’s Manifesto, a women’s group, for instance, urges the government to act for women with disabilities as well as poor women (Women’s Manifesto, IV).^[74] Still, there is no mention of discrimination against women based on ethnicity or sexual orientation in the manifesto that suggests it might not be intersectional enough.

Again, while SDG tends to focus on class in terms of upward mobility and financial security by organizing around education access and financial literacy, PDM organizes typically around gender-based violence, using media to assert that their activism includes all women—in poverty, with disabilities, and LGBTQ-identified—and that their feminism contains space for all issues. Such a position would align them well within African decolonial feminisms if they implemented it in their practice. In addition, the two groups differ, perhaps most starkly, around emphasizing the issue of sexual violence against women. Sexual violence against women stands at the convergence of feminist and decolonial movements, given the history of African women’s subjugation through colonialism. PDM’s comparatively limited offline engagement revolves around consent and sexual violence education, especially more recently, and thereby channels an essential element of decolonial African feminism.

Again, these contemporary groups are drawing on a long history of women’s advocacy and activism around domestic violence in Ghana, as emphasized by PDM. The Domestic Violence Coalition, which was formed with the sole goal of passing legislation to protect women from domestic abuse, painstakingly fought to repeal the clause which legalized marital rape and faced much resistance from the state and public for this effort.^[75] On the other hand, SDG has consistently avoided confronting or criticizing men in their activism with the premise that they aim at working together with men. In that sense, we could say that SDG has more widespread support on the street than PDM. Nevertheless, if we compare their media engagements, we see a different trend. PDM garners more likes from virtual spaces such as Facebook and WhatsApp, but this might also be because SDG focuses on on-the-ground projects, which may in itself be a counter to the mode of advocacy that PDM embodies as an online force. The fact that SDG garners more support on the street, one could argue, makes it more African streetwise, but it also could reveal coloniality. The majority of those SDG supporters sampled seem to agree with a Western conception of gender because it favors them while a minority rejects those concepts.

Conclusion

The paper highlighted perceived notions about Ghanaian womanhood in culture, religion, literature, film, academia, politics, and government. I illustrated the Ghanaian situation taking cues from the general discourse in the more prominent western feminism, then stepped down to look at African feminism—which explicitly points to multi-feminisms or names transnational feminism as a way of identifying feminist experiences everywhere—then narrowing it to examine neo-feminist groups in Ghana.

Findings indicate that Pepper Dem Ministries and Sugar Dem Ghana emerged from histories of women’s activism within the Ghanaian context and beyond. It was observed that the accusation that PDM is Western is one that many feminist groups in Ghana have endured, even though PDM’s analysis of society attempts at inclusivity of both sexes while the emphasis on sexual violence grounds them in the tradition of African and Ghanaian feminisms that came before them. On the other hand, Sugar Dem Ghana seems to be stuck in the trends of the 1990s as they focus on development issues instead of challenging patriarchy. On the contrary, SDM affirms a woman has a subjugated place as a helper, which makes it difficult to consider them as feminists since it seems to be rooting for men instead of women. Nevertheless, both Pepper Dem Ministries and Sugar Dem Ghana have room to grow into decolonizing African feminisms as neither group has yet deconstructed Western gender binaries or theorized from a position of indigenous gender ideologies. More importantly, Amadiume states that there is no single African feminism but still asserts that African feminisms must be decolonial and African-centered^[76] as the decolonial project is fundamentally about restoring the dignity of all African people.^[77]

NOTES

1. Clement Edward Kumsah, “Ace Ankomah ‘Fights’ Feminist Dela Goldheart on Facebook,” Prime News Ghana.com, February 3, 2018. ↑

2. Dela Goldheart @delagoldheart, “If you want to praise your slaving or hardworking or loving wife, whatever adjective you find suitable, please go ahead without suggesting that she defines what womanhood totally entails,” Facebook Post, February 2 2018. ↑

3. See “We Never Said Cooking by Women Is Slavery—Pepper Dem Clarifies Stance,” Citi93FM Online, http://citifmonline.com/2018/02/we-never-said-cooking-by-women-is-slavery-pepper-dem-clarifies-stance. ↑

4. Madina is a suburb of Accra with a very large market. It is densely populated with different ethnic groups from all over Ghana but dominated by Muslims. ↑

5. Legon is a suburb of Accra where the University of Ghana is situated. Participants of the research were selected from the University of Ghana campus. ↑

6. Dejene Yeshiareg, “Promoting Women’s Economic Empowerment in Africa.” Conference Proceedings Addis Ababa, (2007), 5, https://www.Afdb.Org/Fileadmin/Uploads/Afdb/Documents/Knowledge/25040341-EnDraft-Dejene.9-15-07doc.Pdf. ↑

7. Charles Gyan, Charles, Eunice Abbey, and Michael Baffoe, “Proverbs and Patriarchy: Analysis of Linguistic Prejudice and Representation of Women in Traditional Akan Communities of Ghana” Social Sciences 9, no. 3: 22 (2020): 6, https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci9030022. ↑

8. Akosua Adomako Ampofo and Awo Mana Asiedu, “Changing Representations of Women in Ghanaian Popular Music: Marrying Research and Advocacy” Current Sociology, 60, no. 2. (2012): 273. ↑

9. Adomako and Asiedu, “Changing Representations,” 268. ↑

10. Nana Akua Anyidoho, Cynthia Addoquaye, Mawuli Adjei, Ernest Appiah, Abena A. Yeboah-Banin, Aba Crentsil, Joseph Oduro-Frimpong, Adobe Owusu and Dzifa Torkorley, “Roles, Representations and Perceptions of Women in Contemporary Ghana,” April 2016, Technical Report, 16. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.35745.40800. ↑

11. Anyidoho, et al., “Roles, Representations,” 16. ↑

12. Lorraine Code, What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction of Knowledge (New York: Cornell University Press, 1991), 9. ↑

13. Code, What Can She Know? x; Anyidoho, et al., “Roles, Representations,” 16. ↑

14. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, translated by H M Parsley (New York: Penguin, 1972). ↑

15. Code, What Can She Know? ↑

16. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, “Feminist Studies in Religion and a Radical Democratic Ethos” Religion and Theology 2, no. 2 (1995): 122. ↑

17. Linda Woodhead, “Spiritualizing the Sacred: A Critique of Feminist Theology” Modern Theology 13, no. 2 (1997), 18. ↑

18. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 161. ↑

19. Beauvoir, Ibid. ↑

20. Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan, “Warrior Marks: Global Womanism’s Neo-Colonial Discourse in a Multicultural Context” Camera Obscura 13: 39.(1996), 6, https://doi.org/10.1215/02705346-13-3_39-4. ↑

21. Grewal and Kaplan, “Warrior Marks,” 16. ↑

22. Grewal and Kaplan, “Warrior Marks,” 16. ↑

23. Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society, (London: Zed Press, 1987), 185. ↑

24. Sylvia Tamale, Decolonization and Afro-Feminism (Ottawa: Daraja Press, 2020), 41. ↑

25. Afiba Boateng, interview by Genevieve Nrenzah, January 19, 2019. ↑

26. Tamale, Decolonization, 101. ↑

27. Emmanuel Boakye, “Explorers and Missionaries in West Africa,” 2020, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339777309_explorers_and_missionaries_in_west_africa. ↑

28. Leonore Davidoff, and Catharine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780-1850 (London: Routledge, 2018), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315157610. ↑

29. Ulrike Sill, Encounters in Quest of Christian Womanhood: The Best Mission in Pre- and Early Colonial Ghana (The Netherlands: Brill, 2001), 73. ↑

30. Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women: Making Sense of Western Gender Discourse (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 128-130. ↑

31. Tamale, Decolonialization, 100. ↑

32. Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society, 89-90. ↑

33. Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women: Making Sense of Western Gender Discourse. ↑

34. Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women: Making Sense of Western Gender Discourse, 76. ↑

35. Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women: Making Sense of Western Gender Discourse, 1. ↑

36. Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women: Making Sense of Western Gender Discourse, 136-141 ↑

37. Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women: Making Sense of Western Gender Discourse, 123. ↑

38. Axille Coetzee and Louise du Toit, “Facing the Sexual Demon of Colonial Power: Decolonizing Sexual Violence in South Africa” European Journal of Women’s Studies 25, no. 2 (2018): 221. ↑

39. Coetzee and du Toit, “Facing the Sexual Demon of Colonial Power,” 224. ↑

40. Elizabeth Spelman, Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought (Boston: Beacon, 1989), 129. ↑

41. Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women: Making Sense of Western Gender Discourse, 4. ↑

42. Tamale, Decolonization and Afro-Feminism (Ottawa: Daraja Press, 2020), 29. ↑

43. Susan Arndt, The Dynamics of African Feminism: Defining and Classifying African-feminist Literature, translated by Isabel Cole, (Michigan: Africa World Press, 2002), 21. ↑

44. Arndt, The Dynamics of African Feminism, 27. ↑

45. Florence Dolphyne Abena The Emancipation of Women: An African Perspective. (Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 2005), xiii. ↑

46. Arndt, The Dynamics of African Feminism, 30. ↑

47. Tamale, Decolonization, 43. ↑

48. Takyiwaa Manuh, “Doing Gender Work in Ghana” in Africa after Gender? Eds. Catherine M. Cole, Takyiwaa Manuh, Stephan F. Miescher, Stephan Miescher (Indiana: Indiana University, 2007), 132. ↑

49. Manuh, “Doing Gender,” 132-134 ↑

50. Manuh, “Doing Gender,” 135. ↑

51. Marie-Antoinette Sossou, “The Meaning of Gender Equality in Ghana: Women's Perceptions of the Issues of Gender Equality: Implications for Social Work Education and Practice in Ghana” Women in Welfare Education 8, no. 1 (2006). ↑

52. Pepperdemministries.com, Pepper Dem Ministries Facebook Page, About, https://www.facebook.com/PDMunlearningToxicNarratives/about/?ref=page_internal. ↑

53. PDM Facebook Page Post, July 5, 2020. ↑

54. Afia Pokua, interview by Adom News, February 14 14, 2018. ↑

55. Afia Pokua, SDG Facebook Page post, Feb 12, 2018. ↑

56. Nana Adwoa, SUGARDEM GH, Facebook, December 15, 2018. ↑

57. Pepper Dem Ministries, Facebook, September 22, 2017. ↑

58. Logan Chamberlain, “The Berlin Conference and the Partition of Africa,” Infoplease, February 19, 2021, https://www.infoplease.com/history/world/partition-of-africa ↑

59. Mark Silk, “Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition in America” American Quarterly 36, no. 1 (1984): 65–85, https://doi.org/10.2307/2712839. ↑

60. Ghana Statistical Service 2002: 6. ↑

61. The Issue, interview by Genevieve Nrenzah, March 13, 2018. ↑

62. Mahama, interview by Genevieve Nrenzah, March 14, 2018 ↑

63. Basila, interview by Genevieve Nrenzah, June 12, 2018. ↑

64. Dabo, interview by Genevieve Nrenzah, June 12, 2018. ↑

65. Mary, interview by Genevieve Nrenzah, March 29, 2018 ↑

66. Dennis, interview by Genevieve Nrenzah, June 10, 2018. ↑

67. Peter, Legon, Genevieve Nrenzah, July 1, 2018. ↑

68. Cici, Legon, Genevieve Nrenzah, July 1, 2018. ↑

69. Dora, interview by Genevieve Nrenzah, June 10, 2018. ↑

70. Rosemond, interview by Genevieve Nrenzah, June 10, 2018. ↑

71. Dzodzi Tsikata, “Women's Organizing in Ghana since the 1990s: From Individual Organizations to Three Coalitions” Development 52, no. 2 (2009): 186. ↑

72. Tsikata, “Women’s Organizing in Ghana,” 185. ↑

73. Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Reprint Edition, (New York: Crossing, 2007), 138. ↑

74. The Women’s Manifesto for Ghana, 2004, The Coalition on the Women’s Manifesto for Ghana hosted by ABANTU for Development, 2004, iv. ↑

75. Tsikata, “Women’s Organizing in Ghana,” 190. ↑

76. Amadiume, 65. ↑

77. Tamale, 21.

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