Gender
Cultural Differences:
During my interview for my ISSLP in Helekpe Ghana, I was asked many situational questions, one of which was “What would you do if you saw a man beating his wife?” While I truly did not know what I would do since I had never been a situation like that, I of course said that I would not interfere. While this gave them some confidence in choosing me to represent the United States as well as Notre Dame at the site, it also gave me a heads up to start mentally preparing myself to be unprepared, and face things that I have never faced before.
Ghana was definitely something that I could never have been completely prepared for in so many ways, and was made very clear within the first few days we were in the village. On the first night we were in Helekpe, me and my site partner, Andrew, were sitting on our porch, and heard a bunch of yelling coming from just across the courtyard outside the house catty-corner to us. A man (who we actually later became very good friends with) and this woman were screaming at each other, and attacking one another. Andrew and I didn’t know what to do but sit there and look at each other while what seemed to be the whole village swarmed around the scene.
While we expected gender relations to be much different in Ghana, and particularly in the village, I was still blown away by how different men and women interacted in Ghana than in the United States. Though it was very common to see men holding hands with each other, I only ever saw a man and a woman holding hands once, and that was in a major city. I knew who most of the mothers were for the kids that hung out with us on our porch at night, but I could not have told you who the fathers were, since I very rarely saw the “family unit” together, or even the parents together.
Village Gender Roles
Gender roles in general seemed to be much more defined in the village (in a rural setting) than what I observed while we were in the larger cities. In a very simplified summary, women ran the household and men ran the farm. About 97% of the families that lived in Helekpe were based on subsistence farming. Even the few families that did not farm as their mainstay still had farms, because as one of our friends Stephen put it, “of course we have a farm, we have to eat.” During the week, the man of the family would go to the farm, while the woman would stay home, bath and feed the children, send them to school, and then usually have some small business that they ran. This spanned a huge range of roles, from buying bush meat from hunters and drying it to sell to vendors in Accra or other big cities, sewing, selling household items from small stands, or making palm oil/wine. The men would leave early in the morning, and spend the whole day on the farm harvesting the small amount of food they could for that day (usually only enough for one meal a day) and weeding their farm.
My Experience as a white woman in Ghana
Before leaving Notre Dame for the summer/Ghana, I asked the girls that had gone the past two years how they experienced being a woman in this sort of culture. What they told me definitely seemed to hold true. While I am a woman in a very male dominated society, I am also white. Being white dominated any gender stereotype that the men may have given me (well, except for their persistence in proposals), and I was treated with the utmost respect and curtsey. I thought that this respect may also hold true for the woman, Josephine, who was the only woman on the five member board for AYEC, the NGO I worked with. It soon became very clear that she would not talk at the meetings unless someone asker her question (usually me or Andrew). This was very frustrating and kind of off-putting. I found myself asking her questions probably more than was necessary, just so she would be more involved. Was this the right thing to do?
Ghanaian gender roles have had me reeling and questioning if my judgments were completely unfounded, and just how biased my perceptions were/are. Unsurprisingly, there has been a fair amount of research on violence against women in Ghana, and their perceptions of it. In the paper “Violence against women in Ghana: a look at women’s perceptions and review of policy and social responses,” Margaret Amoakohene raises the issue of cultural acceptance of a norm, and how "physical assault by husbands is considered 'normal.'" (Pg. 2383, 2004) Though I wasn’t able to talk in detail to women about their perception of their relationships with their husbands, they seemed to be happy running the family like they did, as well as having their own businesses. Their relationships with their spouses seemed inconsequential. While looking at literature, another study I found particularly interesting was one written by S. Canagarajah, C. Newman and R. Bhattamishra in 2001, “Non-farm income, gender, and inequality: evidence from rural Ghana and Uganda.” This paper talked about how the small businesses that many women own, such as in Helekpe, can be a way for women to come out of poverty, as well as create a sense of superiority over others. I would love a chance to go back to Ghana, and have a chance to talk to the women I interacted with every day about their perception of their own place and roles in society.
During my interview for my ISSLP in Helekpe Ghana, I was asked many situational questions, one of which was “What would you do if you saw a man beating his wife?” While I truly did not know what I would do since I had never been a situation like that, I of course said that I would not interfere. While this gave them some confidence in choosing me to represent the United States as well as Notre Dame at the site, it also gave me a heads up to start mentally preparing myself to be unprepared, and face things that I have never faced before.
Ghana was definitely something that I could never have been completely prepared for in so many ways, and was made very clear within the first few days we were in the village. On the first night we were in Helekpe, me and my site partner, Andrew, were sitting on our porch, and heard a bunch of yelling coming from just across the courtyard outside the house catty-corner to us. A man (who we actually later became very good friends with) and this woman were screaming at each other, and attacking one another. Andrew and I didn’t know what to do but sit there and look at each other while what seemed to be the whole village swarmed around the scene.
While we expected gender relations to be much different in Ghana, and particularly in the village, I was still blown away by how different men and women interacted in Ghana than in the United States. Though it was very common to see men holding hands with each other, I only ever saw a man and a woman holding hands once, and that was in a major city. I knew who most of the mothers were for the kids that hung out with us on our porch at night, but I could not have told you who the fathers were, since I very rarely saw the “family unit” together, or even the parents together.
Village Gender Roles
Gender roles in general seemed to be much more defined in the village (in a rural setting) than what I observed while we were in the larger cities. In a very simplified summary, women ran the household and men ran the farm. About 97% of the families that lived in Helekpe were based on subsistence farming. Even the few families that did not farm as their mainstay still had farms, because as one of our friends Stephen put it, “of course we have a farm, we have to eat.” During the week, the man of the family would go to the farm, while the woman would stay home, bath and feed the children, send them to school, and then usually have some small business that they ran. This spanned a huge range of roles, from buying bush meat from hunters and drying it to sell to vendors in Accra or other big cities, sewing, selling household items from small stands, or making palm oil/wine. The men would leave early in the morning, and spend the whole day on the farm harvesting the small amount of food they could for that day (usually only enough for one meal a day) and weeding their farm.
My Experience as a white woman in Ghana
Before leaving Notre Dame for the summer/Ghana, I asked the girls that had gone the past two years how they experienced being a woman in this sort of culture. What they told me definitely seemed to hold true. While I am a woman in a very male dominated society, I am also white. Being white dominated any gender stereotype that the men may have given me (well, except for their persistence in proposals), and I was treated with the utmost respect and curtsey. I thought that this respect may also hold true for the woman, Josephine, who was the only woman on the five member board for AYEC, the NGO I worked with. It soon became very clear that she would not talk at the meetings unless someone asker her question (usually me or Andrew). This was very frustrating and kind of off-putting. I found myself asking her questions probably more than was necessary, just so she would be more involved. Was this the right thing to do?
Ghanaian gender roles have had me reeling and questioning if my judgments were completely unfounded, and just how biased my perceptions were/are. Unsurprisingly, there has been a fair amount of research on violence against women in Ghana, and their perceptions of it. In the paper “Violence against women in Ghana: a look at women’s perceptions and review of policy and social responses,” Margaret Amoakohene raises the issue of cultural acceptance of a norm, and how "physical assault by husbands is considered 'normal.'" (Pg. 2383, 2004) Though I wasn’t able to talk in detail to women about their perception of their relationships with their husbands, they seemed to be happy running the family like they did, as well as having their own businesses. Their relationships with their spouses seemed inconsequential. While looking at literature, another study I found particularly interesting was one written by S. Canagarajah, C. Newman and R. Bhattamishra in 2001, “Non-farm income, gender, and inequality: evidence from rural Ghana and Uganda.” This paper talked about how the small businesses that many women own, such as in Helekpe, can be a way for women to come out of poverty, as well as create a sense of superiority over others. I would love a chance to go back to Ghana, and have a chance to talk to the women I interacted with every day about their perception of their own place and roles in society.