Marriage in Kumasi, Ghana: Locally Emergent Practices in the Colonial/Modern Gender System

What is it about?

For a long time Westerners (from colonial governments to feminists) have claimed that certain features of marriage can make it good or bad for society and for people--especially women. But is this really true? What makes marriage good or bad? By exploring both the history of marriage and the current experiences of women in Kumasi, Ghana, I show that understanding oppressive marriage conditions requires contextual, local knowledge, not broad classification.

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Why is it important?

This paper shows that the work of cross-cultural feminist conversations requires that Western feminists question their own assumptions about what constitutes oppression, and that we should approach this by questioning key issues (like marriage) within their local historical and socio-political contexts.