When Women Refuse to Accept Water in Honey’s Stead: Dialogic Gender Representations in Selected Ga Proverbs and Contemporary Choral Songs.

Abstract

It is well established in scholarship that in many Ghanaian cultures, gender representations in proverbs and folkloric songs are largely unequal and negative against females. Apart from there not being relatively much research on the subject in relation to the Ga people, a lot of said scholarship is often in subject areas that do not make for a focused, thorough and nuanced study on the subject. And often when research is directly and entirely centered on the subject, the theoretical framework and or dialectical underpinnings of the study, and consequently its direction and outcome(s), are not exactly consistent with the epistemological contexts and cultural realities of the ethnic groups to which the proverbs and song are indigenous. Using an adaptation of Bakhtin’s imagination of Dialogue, together with the kasaŋtswi (indirection) principle and the proverb-name of a Ga sama (symbol), this study suggests four patterns of gender construction in Ga socio-philosophical culture as is evident in Ga proverbs and folkloric songs the kind that Ga music troupe Wulɔmɛi popularize(d). Each of the four patterns has a corresponding implication, an outcome. Per the study’s Dialogic imagination, and more importantly, per the dominant trend of gender representation in the selected Ga proverbs and songs, all four outcomes are generally biased against the female gender.