Fluent Essays

Read first chapter of The Emancipation of Women, Traditional Practices  Africa is a huge continent so we cannot make any generalizations about all women in Africa -- if we went to the continent we would find modern cities, remote and impoverished villages and everything in between those two extremes. The reading provided for this module is by Dr. Florence Abena Dolphyne, a linguist from Ghana who gives a broad outline in this chapter of some of the cultural traditions and expectations for many parts of Africa. Her book was first published in 1991 and has been updated several times -- the version you are reading is from 2008. While there have been a few changes in select areas of Africa, the information she provides is still very much in place in most of the continent. Therefore, you should plan on writing in present tense rather than past tense. Prompt: Discuss three cultural traditions and/or expectations African women experience, as outlined by Dr. Dolphyne. What impact do each of these three have on how women live or options they may want? For example, if the expectation is that women will marry young and have large families, are they encouraged or not to also get an education? Book Title: The Emancipation of Women – An African Perspective Author: Florence Abena Dolphyne Chapter 1: Traditional Practices Every human society has a body of beliefs that regulate the way people behave and relate to each other in the society. Over the years, these beliefs and modes of behaviour are modified to suit the changing circumstances of the society concerned. African societies are no exception. What is different, however, is that as a result of the contact with Western civilization and the uneven influence that this civilization has had on African societies, one finds in every country a contrast between a very Westernized society usually comprising the educated people in the urban cent res and a traditional rural society whose beliefs and way of life often show that they have hardly been touched by Western culture. In this chapter, we will consider some aspects of African culture which have a particular bearing on the issue of womens emancipation. These are customs, traditions and beliefs which have, over the years, helped to keep women under subjugation, and to make them feel generally inferior to men and incapable of operating at the same level as men in society. These are: the institution of marriage with its related issues of bride-wealth, child-marriage, polygamy, purdah, widowhood and inheritance of property, high fertility and puberty rites with specific reference to female circumcision. Marriage The institution of marriage is a very important one in all African societies. It is primarily a union between two families, rather than between two individuals. Traditionally, marriages are arranged between two families. When a young man decides he wants a particular woman for his wife, he tells his parents about it, and it then becomes the parents responsibility and that of elders of the extended family to ask for the womans hand from her parents. Before this is done, the parents try to find out all they can about the womans family, whether there are any chronic or hereditary illnesses such as mental disorders in the family, whether there are any known criminals in the family, whether the women in the family are known to be respectful and hardworking or not and so on. These are important matters that are known to ensure the stability or otherwise of a marriage. Emotional attachment between husband and wife was supposed to develop later, and therefore love between a young man and a young woman was not in itself considered legitimate grounds for marriage. If the young mans parents are not satisfied with what they find out, they will tell their son that he should look for someone else, or suggest somebody they approve of to him. In the same way, when a womans family has been approached with a proposal of marriage from the mans parents, they also investigate the mans background and decide whether or not they would want their daughter to marry into that family. It must be emphasized that the success of a marriage, even in modern times, depends to a considerable extent, on whether or not the two families are agreeable - to the union, otherwise the several occasions, such as a child-naming ceremony, a wedding or a funeral, during which the two families will have to interact, may very well become a serious source of irritation and conflict that may result in the breakdown of the marriage. Even today, the educated urban young man and woman, who believe they are in love and would like to get married would do all they can to persuade their parents to agree to the union, that is if the parents are not happy about the relationship, rather than go to the marriage registrars office to get married against their parents wishes. A young man and a woman living in Britain, Europe, America or anywhere else outside their own country, would not normally go through with a marriage ceremony until the mans parents have gone to ask for the womans hand from her family. There are cases of Ghanaian young couples who meet while studying in Britain or America and get married without their parents formal consent. However, before they return home to Ghana, or, as sometimes happens, soon after returning home, the man asks his relations to go to the womans family to perform the necessary marriage custom so that the marriage would be recognized by the two families, and their children accepted by both families. If this is not done, and there is a funeral in, say, the womans family, the man will be treated as an outsider and not as an in-law, and the same will apply to the woman if there is a funeral in the mans family. In this way, the society ensures that every marital union is properly a union between two families. This also means that normally divorce cannot be effected until members of both families have failed in their various attempts at reconciliation between husband and wife. Such attempts at reconciliation may even involve people outside the two families, such as respected elders in the community, especially, elders of religious bodies. It must be mentioned, however, that in African societies, a man, his wife and his children do not constitute a family. The nuclear family as understood in Western societies is a new concept in African societies. Family, in the African sense, is the extended family. If it is a patrilineal society, where descent is traced through ones father, then it includes all the paternal relations - paternal uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces and so on. If it is a matrilineal society, where lineage is through the mother, then it includes all maternal relations. Throughout Africa, there are three types of marriage that a man may opt for - marriage under Customary law, in which he can marry as many women as he feels he can support financially; Moslem marriage, in which a man can marry up to four women; and Ordinance marriage (including Christian marriage) in which a man can only have one wife at a time. These reflect the three major cultures that have influenced African societies. Moslem and Ordinance marriages have certain provisions which normally guarantee, to some extent, certain rights for a wife and children, and these are fairly uniform irrespective of the traditions and customs of the particular African society. The rights of a wife and children in Customary law marriages, on the other hand, are determined by the traditions of the particular African society. For example, in a patrilineal society, where lineage is traced through the father, the woman on marriage may become a member of her husbands extended family, and so are any children born in the marriage, as is the practice in many parts of eastern and southern Africa. However, in some patrilineal societies, such as those of the Ga and Dangme of Ghana, a woman is never a member of her husbands family, although her children are. In matrilineal societies such as those found in parts of West Africa, a woman and her children never belong to the husbands family. Aspects of Customary law marriage such as the giving of bride-wealth, child- marriage, widowhood and the inheritance of property are discussed below. For the moment it is sufficient to say that the majority of African women are married according to the traditions of their particular societies. Even those married under the Ordinance or Moslem law usually complete the procedures of Customary law marriage, sometimes referred to by such people as the engagement , before they go to the marriage registrars office, or to the church to have the marriage registered and/or solemnized. This, in a sense, means that such couples have been married twice. In the Moslem system, the marriage ceremony may take place in the home in the presence of the Imam or any other person authorized to register a marriage. Before I leave off the institution of marriage, let me mention something which, for the moment, is a non-issue for African women. This is the question of who does what in the home. Every African woman grows up knowing that it is the woman who cooks the meals and generally sees to it that the house is clean and well-kept, and that everything is in its proper place. Whatever her level of education or professional status, she does not normally expect her husband to share the household chores with her. If the husband enjoys cooking and chooses to cook breakfast or dinner one day, she appreciates the fact that he is being helpful, but she does not expect him to do so as a matter of course. Husbands who, when they were living with their wives in Europe or America, willingly did the washing up or the laundry, put an end to that as soon as they return to Africa. The wives do not normally protest because they know their society does not expect a man to do such chores, and they will, therefore, not receive a sympathetic hearing even from their own relations, if they complained. In general, most professional women employ house-helps to do the basic chores in the home. Very often, the salary of a house-help is the responsibility of the woman, for it is taken for granted that the person is there to do her job for her. And, not surprisingly, many professional women do not make a fuss about this, because they know the wider society is not yet ready to see any change in the present domestic arrangements. They cannot, therefore, expect sympathy or support for any move for such a change, especially when there are more important issues that affect the status and welfare of women. It must be mentioned, though, that with urbanization and the need for a man and his wife to be working full-time in order to have a reasonable standard of living, one finds that husbands in lower-income homes, who cannot afford to engage the services of a house-help, are helping their wives with such chores as doing the laundry at the week-end or taking care of the children when the wife is cooking. Such people constitute only a small fraction of the population, but I mention it because it is an encouraging trend, even though it is bound to remain a limited urban phenome on for many years. One may also mention the fact that even among traditional rural farming communities, such as those of the Asante of Ghana, when a man and his wife move out of the village to live alone on their farm during the planting or harvest season, the man often assists the wife with some of the household chores, although this stops as soon as they move back into the bigger village community. This situation is very similar to that described above in relation to the African husband in Europe or America whose attitude to housework changes as soon as he returns home to Africa. It would appear, therefore, that the attitude of at least some African men to helping their wives at home is primarily dictated by the fear of their being ridiculed by the wider society as being dominated by their wives, an attitude that will take a long time to change. Another marriage-related issue that may be mentioned here is that of the legitimacy of children born outside marriage. It has been stated above that a man may opt for one of three types of marriage. Customary law and Moslem marriage are potentially polygamous, while Ordinance (including Christian) marriage is monogamous. If a man opts for monogamy, he cannot have another wife while the marriage persists. However, any children that he has outside wedlock are considered legitimate, for in African societies legitimacy is determined by paternity. An illegitimate child is one whose putative father refused to accept responsibility for the pregnancy that brought him into the world. In general, however, because a child is born into an extended family, the fact that he does not have a father does not normally create for him the complex problems that his counterpart in the Western world, for example, has to grapple with. This is because there is nothing in African societies like the stigma that goes with illegitimacy in Western societies. The question of illegitimacy is one which, in recent years, is being discussed in some African countries where women married in a monogamous system feel that children born outside wedlock should not be accorded the same rights as those born within it. Opponents of this view argue that the concept of illegitimacy is foreign to African culture, and that it should not be introduced into our legal system, especially since it is known that, in some cultures the stigma of illegitimacy has very serious adverse effects on children so regarded. In Ghana, the Law on Intestate Succession, passed in 1985, confirms the traditional view on legitimacy of children and stipulates that all children that a man has, inside and outside wedlock, have equal interest in his property. Bride-Wealth Before a marriage is effected, gifts are normally exchanged between the families of the bride and the groom. However, what is provided by the groom is always substantially higher in value than what is provided by the bride, which, in some societies like the Ga or Akan of Ghana, consists of a meal that is shared by both families. In some southern African societies such as the Swazi of Swaziland, the bride gives expensive colourful blankets for selected in-laws. In the predominantly traditional non-literate society, the exchange of gifts is meant to be evidence of a contract of marriage between the two families. In all African societies, it appears that what is given by the man, or in some cases demanded from him, as bride-wealth is determined by various factors. One of these is the status of the womans family in the particular community, for example, whether or not she comes from a royal family or a family of wealthy and influential men and women. Another is the status of the woman herself, for example, whether or not she has had any formal education, and if she has, what level of education she has attained. Another important factor in determining the value of the bride-wealth appears to be whether the society concerned is matrilineal or patrilineal. African societies can be broadly divided into two major types, matrilineal, where lineage is traced through the mother, and children born in a marriage belong to the mothers family; or patrilineal, where lineage is through the father and the children belong to the father’s family. The bride-wealth given by a prospective husband to his would-be bride is generally much higher in patrilineal societies. This is because it is considered that the womans family is going to lose her services, for example, on the farm, and she is also going to have children for the mans family to ensure its continuity, so in a sense, the man has to compensate her family adequately for these services that she would be performing for him. This is particularly true of the cattle-rearing societies of southern and eastern Africa, where a woman becomes part of a mans family on marriage. In these societies, a man may give anything between twenty and sixty cows for a wife. In some of these societies, such as among the Swazi, where the man cannot provide the total herd of cattle required as bride-wealth at the time of the marriage, an arrangement can be made for him to provide them in instalments. If he is unable to provide all of it before his death, his son will have to do that for him; otherwise, it will be a source of disgrace for both the man and the woman. Women in such marriages have very little power. If they are ill-treated, they cannot normally ask for divorce because their parents will have to give back to the man the total herd of cattle that he gave as bride-wealth, and invariably the family would not be in a position to do so. The amount of ill-treatment that some of the women in such marriages put up with can be quite severe·. Since they usually have no property of their own, and they cannot expect any protection or support from members of their own family, they suffer in silence, or, as sometimes happens, commit suicide. It must be mentioned, however, that in those patrilineal societies, such as the Ga and• Dangme of Ghana, where the woman does. not become a member of her husbands family, the bride-wealth given is not very substantial, and the women in these societies have greater freedom when it comes to divorce. In the matrilineal society, a woman never becomes a member of her husbands family. She remains a member of her own family and so do the children that she bears. This means that what her own family loses on her getting married are her services on the farm, for example, but in the place of this, it is understood by her family that the husband is going to help her have children who ensure the continuity of her own lineage. This is a: greater advantage to her own family, so what is given as bride-wealth is relatively small. As with marriage in a patrilineal society, the bride-wealth has to be returned on divorce, and since it is usually not substantial, this can be readily done, so that marriage in a matrilineal society is, on the whole less stable than marriage in a patrilineal one, but it also means that a woman in such a society is less likely to put up with ill-treatment from her husband. This is because she continues to enjoy the protection of members of her own family and may even continue to live in her family house after marriage. The confidence that such a woman has is reflected in the Akan (Ghana) saying which translates as If you divorce me I will not eat stones. Women from different parts of Africa generally agree that the bride-wealth that is demanded by a womans relations, or what the would-be husband feels he should give as bride-wealth befitting his status and that of his would-be bride, is often too exorbitant. Many of them would want to see some restriction on the total value of the bride-wealth, whether in cattle, in gifts or in cash, for with the introduction of a cash economy into African societies, parents, especially those in urban centres, often ask for the cash equivalent of the bride-wealth, and this can be very high indeed. However, many women do not want to see an end to the practice because they feel that it is a source of disgrace for a woman to enter marriage without some bride-wealth being given to her and her relations. She will be ridiculed by the society as not being of much value in the eyes of her family. In the long run, it is the man, who has been saved the expenditure, who will at a later date turn round and insult her as having been given away for free by her relations because they felt she was either a burden or not of much value to her family. It has already been explained that the bride-wealth, especially in the cattle-rearing patrilineal societies, is basically a compensation to the womans family for the loss of her services. If no bride-wealth is given it would be a denial of a womans worth to her husband in terms of the services she is expected to give, and the woman could be held up for ridicule. It would appear, therefore, that this is one tradition that will not be abolished in the foreseeable future. Indeed, if there was legislation abolishing it, it would be impossible to enforce it, especially in the rural areas where people have very strong attachment to tradition. It may possible, however, to appeal to traditional rulers and heads of religious bodies to use their influence to stipulate what the bride-wealth should consist of, so that an upper limit can be set. In appealing to such leaders in the society, the argument should not be that the bride-wealth system is a form of slavery because the high value of some bride-wealth seems to imply that the woman has been bought. Such an argument would be considered foreign to African thinking and western-inspired. What is more likely to receive sympathetic hearing is the argument that it is not healthy for a couple to start off married life with a debt on their hands since very often people have to borrow money in order to obtain the appropriate type of bride-wealth, or give the cash equivalent of what is considered adequate and proper. In Ghana, some congregations of the Presbyterian Church insist that if the bride-wealth given is more than a certain value, the church would refuse to bless the marriage. In order to ensure that this is enforced, an elder of the church is usually present at the customary marriage ceremony. This is one way of ensuring that the bride-wealth is kept within reasonable limits, and so far it seems to be achieving its objective in spite of the protests that some families sometimes make at these ceremonies. Chiefs and Traditional Councils in some parts of the country have also stipulated what the bride-wealth should consist of, and efforts are made to ensure that the rules are kept. It should be possible for womens organizations to put pressure on the leaders of their communities, especially traditional rulers, to work out a way of cutting down the cost of marriage so that ultimately it will become clear to every man in the society that the paltry amount that he spends in acquiring a wife cannot in any sense be construed to mean that he has bought her. Such a move will meet with a great deal of resistance, especially in some of the cattle-rearing patrilineal societies where parents look to the marriage of their daughters as a sure means of acquiring property. It would appear, therefore, that a permanent solution to some of the family-related problems will have to be an overall improvement in the living standards of people. This will reduce parents dependence on their children as their only insurance against poverty in their old age. Child Marriage As has been explained in the. introduction to the discussion on marriage, arranged marriages are a feature of traditional African societies, and it is within this context that the following discussion on child marriage must be understood. In some societies, an older man may indicate to the parents of a young girl that either he himself would like to marry the girl when she becomes of age or he would like to marry her for his son. This usually happens when there are very cordial relations between the two families or when the man believes the girls family is known to have hard-working, well-behaved women. If the girls parents are agreeable, the man usually assumes financial responsibility for her upkeep, giving her clothing and other gifts, and paying for her education where applicable. In some cases, the young girl may be given to her prospective mother-in-law to bring up, so that she would grow up knowing how things are done in her future husbands family. This also ensures that she becomes acquainted with her future in-laws long before she starts married life, and this helps to eliminate the trauma that she would otherwise experience if she had to leave her own parents home at about age twelve or thirteen to start married life in her husbands home. After the young girl reaches the age of puberty, the man decides when she is old enough to be taken to his house to start married life, and it is at such time that the formal marriage procedures are gone into, although very often the expenditure on her during childhood is taken into account in determining the. value of the bride-wealth. If the girl is in school, she is invariably withdrawn from school when the man decides she is ready for marriage, and so such girls very often do not complete formal education. In many cases, this is a way of ensuring that the girl does not become too sophisticated and have ideas about falling in love with somebody else. Although such arrangements may have worked in the past, it often happens in modem times that a girl may refuse to marry the man she had been promised to when she was a child. This creates problems for everybody. If the parents are unable to persuade her into marrying the man, they have to refund to him all the money that he had spent on her since he made the proposal of marriage. This is often impossible for them to do, for if they were rich, they probably would not have allowed the future husband to spend that much money on her in the first place. In some societies, as in parts of northern Ghana, a girl may get out of this difficult situation by eloping with her lover, but the lover will have to refund to the rejected man all the money that he had spent on her, which he may not be in a position to do. Invariably, what happens is that the girl is forced to go and live with her husband, sometimes with very unpleasant consequences, for she may be locked up for some time, or otherwise coerced into agreeing to s y in the husbands home and live as a married woman. Since such girls cannot expect any protection from their parents, they either submit to their new way of life or, as sometimes happens if they have the guts, they may run away to an urban centre where they can hopefully get lost. It is known that quite often such girls end up as prostitutes in the urban centres for they very often have no skills that will get them a job, and they usually avoid people they know, who can help them, for fear of being sent back to their angry husbands or parents. The experiences that these young brides - sometimes as young as twelve years - often go through are quite traumatic. Because of their young age and because their bodies are not sufficiently fully developed to cope with child - bearing, they sometimes suffer permanent damage to their health at the birth of their first child. Most African countries have incorporated into their Constitutions the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Many have signed, and some have even ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women which, among other things, requires member states to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women: the same right freely to choose a spouse and to enter into marriage only with their free and full consent. (Article 16, 1 (b).) However, one is yet to see in any of these countries, a law banning child- marriage. Those who support the practice say that it is the way society ensures the moral uprightness of its women, who, as mothers of the next generation, must have the highest moral standards so as to be able to impart the same to their children. They must, therefore, be married off early to ensure that they do not become wayward. But as has been pointed out, the same practice has forced some girls to run away from home and end up as prostitutes. Some men also claim it is a source of rejuvenation for adult men, although there is no medical evidence to support this claim. In the societies where the practice persists, it is usually the men who support it, and unfortunately they are the law-makers and the traditional rulers, and they cannot be expected to legislate against it. One possible way of dealing with the problem is for there to be legislation stipulating a minimum age for marriage. But perhaps a more effective way of eradicating the practice is for governments in the various countries to pass and enforce a law making formal education compulsory for all children, and stipulating a minimum number of years - at least 9 years - during which children should stay in school. This would at least ensure that until they complete compulsory formal education at about age 14 or 15, girls would not be forced to go and start married life, even though they may have been promised in marriage at an earlier age, for the practice of arranged marriages is one that will be difficult to eliminate completely, since it will be impossible to enforce or monitor its elimination. Again, one comes back to the question of the economic prosperity of African countries. In the absence of such economic prosperity, it will be impossible for any government to provide free primary school education for all children, and without such free education, no government can insist or ensure that parents send all their children to school, and keep them there for the stipulated minimum period. Polygamy An Asante (Ghana) folktale that provides a rationale for polygamy goes like this: A man who had been married for about two years decided to take on a second wife. His wife thought there was no need for that since she felt they were getting on perfectly happily. She already had one child, and was likely to have more. The man argued that she alone could not provide for him all the things he needed at the times he needed them; but the woman insisted he had no basis for that claim. To prove his point, the man one day said he wanted to eat Asante kenkey, a preparation from corn-dough, and the woman had that day to prepare it for him. The woman accepted the challenge and started by beating the maize in a very deep mortar to remove the skin from the maize, for the kenkey is made from polished maize. After removing the skin, she pounded the maize in another mortar to …