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Title: | Twentieth-Century Transformations in Notions of Gender, Parenthood, and Marriage in Southern Ghana: A Critique of the Hypothesis of 'Retrograde Steps' for Akan Women |
Author: | Boni, Stefano |
Year: | 2001 |
Periodical: | History in Africa |
Volume: | 28 |
Pages: | 14-41 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Ghana |
Subjects: | gender relations Akan women Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Women's Issues History and Exploration Cultural Roles Sex Roles Historical/Biographical Marital Relations and Nuptiality Family Life |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3172205 |
Abstract: | The theory of 'retrograde steps' emerged in the 1970s and characterized much of the literature on Akan gender relations which followed. What seems common to most studies is that they pose a degradation of female rights, status, and autonomy in the course of the 20th century. The present author argues that this theory of degradation rests on shaky grounds. He examines three crucial issues which, according to different authors, have undergone transformations and produced a deterioration of female status: the stability of marital unions, rights connected to fatherhood, and the gendered division of parental responsibilities. On the basis of an analysis of two sources - colonial court records and classical ethnographies from the 1920s - which have also been used by those defending the degradation of Akan women's conditions, the author shows that change has been overstated in all three cases. In fact, gender inequality and certain features of men's and women's roles and rights seem to have carried through the dramatic transformations of the 20th century. The focus of the article is on the Sefwi area, the northern part of the Western Region of Ghana, a marginal area within the Akan world. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |