‘Edited and Approved by Women for Maximum Benefit of all Readers’: Newsprint Journalism, the International Women’s Year and the Remaking of a Gendered National Public in 1970s Ghana
Date
2023
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Abstract
During the International Women’s Year (IWY) of 1975,
United Nations bodies made concerted efforts to ensure global
awareness and understanding of the IWY aims of equality,
peace and development, via the mass media. In this article, we engage with these strategies of global information
distribution from the vantage point of Ghana, West Africa.
Drawing from interviews with women journalists and examples from the women’s pages of the national state-owned
In the Daily Graphic newspaper, we argue that the onset of the
IWY presented an important opportunity for women living
under the constraints of military rule. A small but determined group of journalists capitalised on a longer history
of readers writing into newspapers, and on lower levels of
government surveillance of women’s pages. Working with
and through multi-layered forms of address, they adapted the
homey, gossipy women’s pages and turned them into spaces
of engagement between men and women as co-citizens.
During the IWY, connections were forged between interna tional events and agendas and ‘domestic issues’. By hosting
older debates about widowhood, inheritance and polygyny,
and newer debates about family planning, formal education
and employment, the women’s pages positioned Ghanaian
women as a key constituency in national development, but
also enabled more assertive critiques of men’s privileges.
Description
Research Article
Keywords
International Women’s Year, Ghana, Gendered