Really desperate housewives
In our latest blog from Ghana, Kanwal Ahluwalia writes about the need to help women who will do almost anything to escape their husbands.
Saturday 2 May, 10.03am: I’m back in Ghana. It’s the start of the rains and the skies are unusually gloomy. But I’m feeling optimistic. I’m here to work predominantly with WOMANKIND’s local partners, the Gender Studies and Human Rights Documentation Centre (Gender Centre), together with Rural Watch, Pro-Link and Amasachina Self-Help Association.
The UK Government’s Department of International Development (DFID) has just awarded us a three-year grant of half a million pounds to work to reduce women’s susceptibility to HIV infection as a result of unequal gender relations. Socially prescribed gender roles often increase women’s likelihood of HIV infection. For example, accepted notions of masculinity and femininity — which make it OK for men to have multiple sexual partners within marriage and obligate women to always agree to sex with their husbands — even when they know they have are sleeping with other women — can increase women’s chances of being infected. So, I am excited to get cracking.
Monday May 3, 6.13pm: I’ve spent the day with Gender Centre and two local organisations, Amasachina Self-Help Association and CEDEP, who are working on a project to reduce violence against women in mainly rural areas of Ghana, where there is little state provision for shelters and other services for women in abusive relationships. We want to ensure that community members feel they can make their voices heard at community meetings. Many villagers are illiterate and — especially if they’ve been abused — currently don’t have the confidence to participate in community meetings.
‘WOMANKIND’s partners are working to reduce violence against women — there is little state provision for shelters and other services for women in abusive relationships.’
Partners told me about a worrying practice in the conservative north-west of Ghana called ‘elopement.’ Given the stigma associated with adultery and divorce, some women in unhappy relationships feel that this is the only way out. They agree to be ‘kidnapped,’ whilst pretending all along not to know the kidnapper.
Once she has ‘eloped’ to his house, the kidnapper will send a message to her husband to demand a payment for her return. In the meantime, the kidnapper’s male friends and family will raise a pole in his house in his honour! If the husband can’t pay the ransom demand, the woman will stay with her kidnapper. But if she has any children with her new partner, custom dictates that they belong to her husband — unless he is able to make the payment.
Although only practised by a small group in this part of Ghana, it’s a really worrying trend for WOMANKIND and our partner organisations. Local-government officials have asked Amasachina Self-Help Group to try and address the problem, because of their excellent track-record of community work. Sadly they don’t have funds to start this work – and neither does the District Assembly (local government office) - but Amasachina is committed to trying to find potential donors to work with communities to improve gender relations and communication between husbands and wives so they can try and stop this harmful practice.
‘Our partner is committed to find donors to fund their work to reduce “elopement” in the north-west’
Wednesday May 5, 6.22pm: It just took an hour and 15 minutes to drive from Gender Centre’s Accra office to my hotel – a journey which should take about 30 minutes. Chelsea plays Barcelona tonight and people are rushing home to watch the match on their TVs — those that have them. Others will be congregating around sets in their local bars. The long drive gave me the opportunity to listen to the BBC World Service, reporting that Jacob Zuma has just been elected as the President of the ANC in South Africa. A controversial figure, once accused of rape, Zuma has voiced opinions on women that alarm many in the women’s movement.
On the theme of elections, Ghana went to the polls in December 2008, resulting in the election as president of Professor John Evans Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) party. Whilst many Ghanaians were relieved that the election passed off peacefully, many women lost their seats.
Fewer women in government can mean fewer gender-sensitive policies or less funding for women’s-rights work, so another WOMANKIND partner, Women in Law and Development (WiLDAF-Ghana), has been lobbying for affirmative-action policies to ensure more women get into both local and national government.
But many in the women’s movement are voicing concerns about the change of government. Under the previous National Patriotic Party (NPP) administration, civil-society organisations flourished. The NDC has a history of a funding certain politically affiliated civil-society organisations —and women are worried that the already diminishing pots of money available to NGOs may get even smaller.
Saturday May 9, 9.58pm: I wake up remembering something that Trudi, the Deputy Director of Pro-Link, one of WOMANKIND’s partners on the new gender and HIV project, said yesterday: ‘When the elephants fight it’s the ground that suffers.’ She was referring to the fact that whilst the outgoing and new governments fight over what was and wasn’t achieved under the NPP government, it is ordinary Ghanaians that suffer. The NDC has come to power in the midst of a global financial crisis, and whilst Ghana has not felt the repercussions to the same extent as we have in Europe, the weakening cedi, and rising inflation and petrol prices are definitely being felt on the ground. And it is usually women who are most vulnerable — often occupying part-time, lower-paid jobs, bearing the responsibility of childcare and school fees — and caring for other relatives.
Monday May 11, 4.52pm: I’m sitting in the dappled shade of banana and mango trees, drinking locally produced pineapple juice with Adwoa Sayki, from the Industrial Relations department of the Ghana Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU), and Margaret Brew-Ward of the Gender Centre. Both organisations are WOMANKIND partners and are part of a nationwide programme to reduce violence against women in its many forms — physical, sexual, psychological and economic. Community volunteers are trained to support women experiencing violence, with, for example, first aid, accompaniment to health centres, mediation between couples — and referrals to the chiefs, the police or social workers.
We are planning a visit tomorrow to the community of Akawani, about two hours outside Accra, the capital of Ghana. Mary, WOMANKIND’s Senior Communications Manager, and I visited this community some six months ago. I wanted to find out how things were for some of the women and men we met then. Akawani is covered with palm trees; the fruits are processed into palm oil. Our conversation soon turns to Ghana’s farmers.
Adwoa tells me how Cadbury — which has been in Ghana for the last 100 years — plans to make their chocolate fair-traded. This means that the profits from the chocolate are ploughed back into Ghana to support the farmers’ working conditions. Currently, cocoa accounts for some 40% of Ghana’s exports and Cadbury buys two-thirds of all the cocoa produced. The chocolate company signed the deal with the previous NPP government, but the new administration has re-stated its commitment to ensuring that farmers’ working conditions are improved.
Adwoa was still anxious, however: how will the profits make their long way back to ordinary farmers? She emphasised that their union, the GAWU, must make farmers aware of what fair-trading chocolate means in practice. Both Adwoa and Margaret rush off to avoid the notorious Accra traffic jams, with the promise of returning at 6.30 in the morning to collect me on the way to Akawani.
Thursday May 14, 5.27pm: The last few days have sped by. The visit to Akawani on Tuesday was definitely the highlight of my trip so far.
We drove for three and a half hours to re-visit some of the people who’ve benefited from our anti-violence project: an elderly Chief, three community volunteers who have been providing support for women in abusive relationships, and a husband and wife who feel that their relationship has improved tremendously as a result of the WOMANKIND-supported programme.
I’ve also been meeting with partners expressly working to advance Ghanaian women’s rights. All of them expressed their concerns at the increasingly repressive environment following the December elections. They talked about the tensions surrounding the elections, and that most people believed that the elections were rigged — none of which was reported in the Western media.
Self-censorship by the print and broadcast outlets seems to be on the rise and some women’s-rights activists are seeing ‘policy spaces’ within which they can engage with the government — to lobby them to make progress towards gender equality — closing down. Even more worrying is the fact that several women’s rights activists have received threats for speaking openly in the media, in an attempt to hold the new government to account in relation to their commitments on women’s human rights. This is a very different Ghana to the one I visited a mere six months ago.
