Degrees of autonomy of rural women in Ghana's Upper East.

• Main Author: Yazdani, E. Louise.
• Other Authors: Denis, Ann
• Format: Others
• Published: University of Ottawa (Canada) 2009
• Subjects: Women's Studies.
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10393/6880; http://dx.doi.org/10.20381/ruor-11499

Using literature, official documents, interviews, and participant observation, several dimensions of rural women's autonomy in the Tilli area of Ghana's Upper East Region were studied. The three hypotheses tested were: (1) Women have been and remain jural minors. (2) Paradoxically however, they are expected to exercise considerable autonomy in specific areas. Furthermore, they demonstrate a number of individual and collective strategies which enable them to exert their will in other areas in spite of social constraints. (3) The effects of encroaching capitalism on northern women's autonomy have not been uniform. Communities in this area differ considerably from those in southern Ghana, and have been described in the literature as organized along patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal lines. The research demonstrated that, indeed, women were jural minors, although their particular life circumstances were also influenced by factors such as ethnicity, social strata, age, marital status, religion, and individual personality. Certain categories of women--those pregnant or breast-feeding, the handicapped, the elderly, widows and divorcees, ethnic minority women, and women resident in the subvillages--were found to be particularly disadvantaged. Yet women were far from powerless overall, nor were they apathetic or retiring. The findings of the research both enrich the database available to development planners, policy makers, project administrators and service providers, and suggest directions for future research. At the same time, they challenge certain assumptions and generalizations about Ghanaian and African women found in both feminist and development literature.