Women and Power in Africa: A Case of the Akan (KOKOFU) Women in Ghana.

Abstract

This thesis seeks to move the discourse on women and power from prevailing notions of powerlessness to cultural notions of power and authority which brings the discourse closer to different notions of agency and actions of women. The presumption that African women lack power and agency to effect change is well established in academia. Unfortunately, recent studies have not sufficiently addressed this case empirically. Evidence from Nigeria and Tanzania show on the contrary that women in some African societies have power and agency which raises many empirical questions about notions and perceptions of power. The issue of women and power has been a global preoccupation for many years. However, different societies approach it differently to reflect their peculiar areas of concern or circumstance. In the twenty-first century, there are still key issues to address, even though the United Nations prefer a global front using the human rights approach. Given that the various member states chartered their individual roads to emancipation, and evolved to where they find themselves today at differing times and chalking different milestones, it seems contradictory to prescribe global indicators to measure where we are and what has been achieved. For example, women in Africa, Ghana specifically should not be measured only by the yardstick used in measuring advancement in Europe or elsewhere. History and cultures produce different perceptions and as such culture is relevant to policy and should be operationalized in their appropriate context. Powers that women possess differ from culture to culture and are defined from culture to culture. Women, in trying to move with the times have also redefined their goals in certain context. Women in Afghanistan for example may still walk behind the men, even in 2020 not because of religious and cultural reasons, but because of the existence of landmines in the fields due to wars. Similarly, women at the Gambaga witch camp in Ghana often return to the witch camp after long and hard fought and-won family reunifications. They cite better economic and social conditions at the camp. After instrumentation of certain rights, compelling African countries to sign them and trying every conceivable way to incorporate them into domestic policies, some African women are secretly going through a medical procedure to fit back into the cultures which ‗western liberators‘ fought so hard to free them from. The philosophy that underpinned the study is interpretivism, with a qualitative research study design, using interviews, focus group discussions and observations in studying a sample of 44 participants of the Akan Asante Kokofu community in Ghana. I examine the origin and etymology of power (tumi), and their gendered forms and how they have evolved overtime. Finally, I analyze how women in this society define and utilize power from their own standpoint, and how the Ghanaian society in general, and communities around them view the whole discussion of the society from their own standpoint. Based on focus group discussions with traditional leaders and lay persons in the Akan community of Kokofu, this study asserts that women in these societies had power and have always had power, except that this power is exercised differently and does not fit into western notions of power and authority which in Akan parlance, is referred to as tumi and tumidie respectively. Consequently, this study concludes, inter alia, that the premise of empowerment as a development tool and goal is flawed because it assumes powerlessness.