The Emancipation of African Women

While I was in Ghana, I found this awesome book in the Cape Coast Castle gift store. It's called The Emancipation of Women: An African Perspective, and it's written by a Ghanaian woman named Florence Abena Dolphyne. She begins by saying that women suffer similar types of injustices in the family structure, education, little access to professional training, etc. The difference, she says, is the degree to which the women suffer these injustices. Africa though, has problems that many other places do not such as polygamy, bride-wealth (bride price), & female circumcision. She goes on to talk about the tensions she witnessed between African women and Western feminists gathering to discuss women's issues at the Mid-Decade Conference in Copenhagen. To begin with, they couldn't even agree upon what was a "women's issue," much less how to address them. The Western solution for African women's problems, which they thought were primarily practices like bride-wealth, polygamy, and female circumcision, were legislative bans. Dolphyne argues that both Western feminists' focus on these issues and their proposed solutions are out of touch with the lived reality of women in Africa. For African women struggling with hunger, access to clean water, no nearby hospitals, etc., "the issue of women's rights is inextricably linked with that of survival," and so "the emancipation of women and the status of women in society are closely linked with national development" (xiv).

This was readily apparent in Aboansan. Polygamy and female circumcision are not practiced there, but bride-wealth is an important part of the marriage ceremony. Before a marriage can take place in Aboansan, a man must go to the woman's parents and present them with gifts that are highly symbolic--bowls and plates, blankets, jewelry, livestock, etc.--to demonstrate that the man is able to provide for the daughter. The bride's family will also present gifts to the groom's family, but the value of this gift is generally significantly lower than the gifts received by the bride's family. The major problem with this practice is not the implicit messages (the bride is being paid for; the groom is paying the bride's family for their prior care taking, a responsibility that he is now posed to assume, etc.) but the vulnerable position that it puts women in. You see, if a woman wants a divorce, she is expected to "pay back" the bride price in full. Aboansan is an agricultural village--farming is their income. Because of strictly adhered to gender norms, women have no access to that income, which is controlled in full by their husbands. What this means is that the burden of repaying the bride price falls on the woman's family who may be unwilling or unable to repay it. Women who cannot payback the bride price cannot get a divorce and are vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse. Women with less money are actually less vulnerable in this situation because the less money a woman and her family have at the time of the wedding, the lower the bride price is. The lower the bride price is, the easier it is for the bride to leave. While the Western solution, according to Dolphyne, is to ban this practice, it would be virtually impossible to enforce, especially in rural villages like Aboansan where there is little government oversight and people are very tied to tradition. For a woman in these villages, to be wedded with a low bride price would indicate that she was of little value to her family. So instead of legislative bans, Dolphyne argues, will do little to stem the problem.

Something else that contributes to cycles of poverty is high fertility rates. To promote limiting the size of the family will not go over well because it is seen as unnatural for an African woman to willfully choose to limit the size of her family. Moreover, at some point parents become dependent on their children to take care of them in their old age. There is a high mortality rate because of poor sanitation and nutrition, high rates of disease, and a lack of access to medical services. Mothers must have lots of babies in order to make sure that enough survive into adulthood. A case in point would be the little boy Emanuel who fell out of a tree, broke his nose, and bled to death because there was no way to get him to a hospital and no money to pay for treatment should he have gotten there. This is a symptom of poverty, not a lack of knowledge about what perpetuates poverty per se. She suggests that the best way to reduce family size is to invest in education. Educated women want a higher standard of living for their children. They are also more likely to understand the health risks associated with not spacing out the births of children.

The problem of course is convincing people of the value of educating girl children. Girls face many challenges in continuing education. Girls may stay out of school to care for younger siblings. If there is only money to send some of the children to school, it is the boys who will be sent. Girls are at risk for pregnancy, which functionally terminates the advancement of their education. Should they make it to apply to secondary school they’ll find that there are fewer spots for girls at these (usually boarding) schools and so girls must score higher to be admitted. Rural girls, she says, are doubly disadvantaged, because they have to leave their villages to go to school which leads to astronomically high drop out rates. This was definitely something I saw in Aboansan. To pursue education beyond the elementary school level, kids must walk a couple miles to a nearby village. This is not possible for girls who attend classes with a baby on their hip. Education should be mandated for all children—regardless of sex—but this can only happen if (1) this can actually be enforced and (2) if education is actually accessible.

What rural African women need more than legislation or attitudinal shifts is the alleviation of the poverty they face. This is not the case for the vast majority of American women. We do not have to rank oppressions to understand that these women are not similarly situated and that the emancipation of women is not a one size fits all.