JENDA: A JOURNAL OF CULTURE AND AFRICAN WOMEN STUDIES ISSN: 1530-5686 Issue 8 (2006)

Olivia Adwoa T. F. Kwapong

Abstract

The object of this study was to assess empowerment among women in Mo communities of the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana in the areas of education, economic and decision-making. In achieving this objective a survey was conducted among 200 women. The study revealed that the women had attained a low level of formal education. However recognizing their level of economic independence and participation in decision-making in the home and community, it could be concluded that the women had attained an appreciable level of empowerment. With some capacity building, there could be a boost in the situation of the women.

Introduction

The Mo Traditional Area is located in the North Western corridor of Ghana. It is in the Brong-Ahafo Region. The area is inhabited by small farming communities with Ayorya, Nkwanta, Weila, New Longoro (Mantukwa), Bamboi, Busuema and Asantekwa as the notable ones.

The position of the women in the Mo communities is complicated and challenging. It is reported in the Ghana-Canada In-Concert Project Document (2000) that the females are more disadvantaged than the males. Compared to their male colleagues, the women have low literacy and income levels, limited access to quality health care and poor participation in decision-making. The Mo communities have features of a rural community as well as high population pressures, decreasing agricultural yields, land degradation and de-forestation as well as traditional problems with poverty and gender inequalities. The women do most of the farming. They are excellent traders and run several businesses in basic processing and sales of farm products, food vending, shear butter extraction, pottery, and sales of household items. As a result of these, many other projects for community empowerment have used the women’s groups for village level activities (Oppong and Quashie-Sam, 2001; Ghana-Canada In-Concert, 2000).

Several attempts have been made towards the empowerment of women in Ghana. The empowerment initiatives in Ghana closely followed the global trends. In response to the United Nations Declaration the Ghana Government established the National Council for Women and Development (NCWD) in 1975. The Council was to advise government on issues relating to integration of women in development at all levels, and to develop and promote related activities and programmes. The Council identified obstacles to women’s development to be illiteracy, lack of education and training at the higher levels. Others were excessive women’s work burden, the need for access to technology, and lack of well-oriented skills. As a major priority, the Council was to engage in massive literacy and non-formal education, then later on, help women to improve or build on their income-generating activities and skills. Further to that, in considering the status of women, Ghana’s Vision 2020 which targets gender inequality or human resource development among its principal objectives lists capacity building as a focus for development assistance.

It is against this background that this study sought to assess the level of empowerment among the women in the Mo communities of the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana.

The object of the study was to find out:

• How the respondents’ bio-characteristics affect their level of empowerment
• The women’s formal educational attainment
• Their economic independence
• The extent of their participation in decision-making in the home and
• The extent to which the women take part in decision-making in their communities

This paper does not only share the findings of the study but discusses observations from the findings.

The Survey

A survey was conducted to find out the level of empowerment among the women of the Mo communities of the Brong-Ahafo Region of Ghana. It was conducted among a total of 200 women of the Mo communities of the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana. The distribution was 66 from Weila, 61 from New Longoro, 39 from Bamboi and 34 from Ayorya. These areas were selected because of the level of marginalisation and deprivation. The distribution was based on the total population of the various communities. Communities with comparative larger population sizes were given larger sample sizes and vice versa. Thus the sample size for each community is representative of the total population of the various communities.

A survey instrument of five sections and 34 items was used to elicit information from the respondents. The instrument included both closed and open-ended questions. Section one was on the personal characteristics of the respondents. It consisted of five items, which questioned respondents on their age, level of formal education, religious affiliation, marital status and major occupation. The second section was designed to elicit information on their level of educational empowerment. It was made up of seven items. The major issues that were raised included the influence of education on their socio-economic life, their desire for further training and their initiatives to enhance female education. The third section was made up of twelve items to test the women’s level of economic empowerment. This section had the highest number of questions. The questions were based on the women’s access to farmland, their income-generating activities, the influence of their spouses on their income-generating activities and their means of saving money. The Section four was designed to find out the women’s level of participation in decision-making in the home. Five items were in this section.

The issues raised were the women’s ability to share ideas with their spouse, the type of decisions that they were able to take and their ability to decide on their own when handing over properties to their heirs. The final section of the survey instrument was structured with the aim of finding out the women’s level of participation in decision-making in their communities. In all there were five items. The items questioned the women’s affiliation to any women’s organisation, the benefits they derived from the associations, their opportunity and ability to express their views in public gatherings and the extent to which their views were taken. The entire survey instrument included 31 closed questions and three open-ended items (find the details in appendix). While the closed questions yielded standardized responses, the open-ended items gave the women the chance to express their views in their own way. Field data was collected with the support of research assistants who were trained teachers from that locality and spoke the local language. Two research assistants were used because they could fluently speak the local language. The people were interviewed in their local dialects (Twi and Deg) to enhance accuracy of the results.

Interviews were carried out in their respective homes. This approach was mainly associated with the problem of a few interruptions from household members and clients of the traders. However at the end of the day the researchers got the required information. The women also had the chance of sharing their experiences. On the average, it took about forty-five minutes to interview one respondent. The interview lasted over a period of four weeks (28 days).

Analysis

The findings of the study will be analysed in this section. The discussion will focus on demographic characteristics of respondents, educational and economic empowerment of the women and their participation in decision-making in the home and the Community.

Demographics of Respondents

On the age of the respondents, the results revealed that whilst 94 percent of the women were in their independent adulthood stage of development (21-60 years), only 2.6 percent fell within a semi dependent stage of below 21 and 61+. This implies that the subjects of the research were persons who were active members of the community. With the majority of the respondents being in their active stage and therefore forming the labour-force of the community, their responses will go a long way to depict a clear picture of the level of empowerment among the women in the Mo communities.

On the participants level of formal education, as many as 33.9 percent of the women had no formal education at all. About 19.7 percent had schooled up to Senior Secondary School (SSS) level with 64.5 percent ending at the Middle, Junior Secondary and Primary school levels. Only 1.6 percent had completed teacher training. This shows that the respondents had a very low level of formal education. Those who managed to attain some form of formal education mainly ended at the basic level. This low level of the women’s formal education can affect their level of empowerment to a very high extent. Pomary (1999:21) explains that “no matter how much we run away from it, the foremost agent of empowerment is education: education is the only passport to liberation, to political and financial empowerment. Education contributes to sustainable development. It brings about a positive change in our lifestyles. It has the benefit of increasing earnings, improving health and raising productivity.” It will therefore be crucial to give the women some adult literacy skills to enhance their capabilities.

Typical of most Ghanaian communities majority of the respondents, 66.1 percent were Christians followed by Muslims who were 23.3 percent with only 9.8 percent being Traditional Religious believers. This gives the indication that since Christians and Moslems are fond of meeting in groups for worship majority of the women were associated with a group. This affiliation could facilitate their empowerment to some extent. Rowlands (1998) remarks that it is through involvement in groups that people most often begin to develop their awareness and ability to take action to bring about change.

The issue of marriage being an important institution to the Ghanaian woman (Dolphyne (1998) highly manifested in the results obtained on marital status of the respondents. From the results, as many as 77 percent of the women were married with only 13.7 percent being single. Owning to the value that women place on marriage only 6percent were either divorced or separated, meaning that the women tried as much as possible to maintain their marriages. Thus marriage appeared significant to and well appreciated by the women. This characteristic could probably enhance empowerment in close relationships among the women as identified by Rowlands (1998).

The major occupation of the respondents was farming thus 71 percent, followed by trading and engagement in other income-generating activities like pito (traditional drink) brewing and the manufacture of artifacts. Only 3.3 percent of the respondents were public/civil servants. The issue of unemployment was not highly prevalent among the respondents. Only 1.1 percent was unemployed. We can therefore establish that almost all the women were engaged in an income generating activity. At least they had a means of earning their livelihood. This feature could go a very long way to facilitate the women’s level of economic empowerment and decision-making leading to a high level of independence. Asante (1978) and Oppong (1974) remark that the woman’s position in decision-making has weight when she has occupational and financial resources. Greenstreet (1978) also emphasizes that the woman’s valuable economic activities enable her to enjoy a great deal of economic independence and equality.

Educational Empowerment

The level of the Mo women’s formal education shown in the results was not far from the reality on the ground that is the low level of education among women in general. This concern has been expressed by Dolphyne (1991), Nikoi (1998), AGE (2000), Kamara (2001) and Awumbila (2001). They all emphasize that women have low literacy levels. It could be observed from the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS 4 (2000) that on general educational attainment about 32 percent of all adults (representing about three and a half million people) have never been to school. There is a marked contrast between females and males in levels of educational attainment. More than twice as many females as males (2.4 million as against 1.1 million) have never been to school. In contrast, only half as many females as males have secondary or higher qualifications.

The results from the survey on women in the Mo communities of Brong Ahafo were not a deviation from the observations in the GLSS 4. As many as 33.9 percent of the women had no formal education at all, 35.5 percent of the women who had had some form of formal education ended at the basic levels of Junior Secondary, Senior Secondary and Middle Schools. Only 1.6 percent had schooled up to Teacher Training level. Probably the ability to complete the basic education seemed enough for the women. As a result of this almost 50 percent of the women rated themselves as having a low level of education with 31.1 percent rating themselves at the average level. This implies that the women had not benefited from the current waves of developments on female education. Though the results further showed that 94 percent of the women desired to promote girl-child education to a very high extent, they were not able to do much probably due to their low level of education. Hence 32.8 percent rated themselves as averagely involved in the promotion of female education and 36.1 percent rated that their involvement was low.

However there appears to be a window of hope. In comparing the women’s age and marital status it was observed that all the women under age 20 were single, not married. The married women fell under ages 21 – 60 (Table 1). This indicates that early marriage was not prevalent among the women and therefore could not become a barrier to their education. Therefore if the women are given the necessary support, some motivation and controlling for other inhibiting factors they could pursue higher education.

Table 1: Relationship Between Age and Martial Status of Respondents

Source: Field Survey, 2001

The major observation that could be made from the results and discussion is that, due to their low levels of educational attainment, it could not be concluded that the women had attained a high level of educational empowerment. However it is encouraging to note that the women wanted to improve upon their low level of educational empowerment, hence 97 percent of the women responded positively to participate in further training to enhance their career with as much as 93.4 percent deciding to give such a program full participation. As many as 94percent also desired to champion the cause of girl-child education whenever they had the opportunity to do so. This shows that the women saw the need to promote the formal education of their younger females to a higher level.

It is impressive also to note that, when asked to give specific instances of activities that they could undertake to help raise the low level of female education in their community, a vast majority of 88percent of the women had something to say. The measures the women proposed to be adopted included organisation of public talks (10 percent), creating awareness on the importance of education (13.7 percent), encouraging parents to send their daughters to school (15.2 percent), counselling girls on the importance of education (23.9 percent); and giving financial assistance (24.1 percent). This portrays a high sense of awareness on the essence of formal education and the desire for educational empowerment.

Economic Empowerment

From results on occupation of respondents, 71 percent of the women were farmers followed by trading (18 percent). About 11percent of the women engaged in other income-generating activities like brewing of pito (local drink), catering services and the manufacture of artefacts. Only 3.3 percent of the women were civil/public servants. Farming therefore happened to be the major occupation of the women. Apart from the farming, trading was the alternative for the women. The results on other sources of income showed that 68.3 percent of the women took trading to be their non-farming income-generating activity. This was followed by other small-scale businesses like cassava processing, shear-butter extraction, pot making, etc which were undertaken by 10.8 percent.

It could be deduced from this analysis that, probably because of the women’s low level of formal education, they operated mainly in the informal sector to gain their livelihood. This assertion can be buttressed with the view of Awumbila (2001) that women have low literacy levels and accompanying poor employment prospects which has accounted for their domination of the informal sector, especially small scale food crop farming and petty-trading. Manu (1990) endorses this view by expressing that the informal sector is considered as the key factor for the survival of a large proportion of the Ghana population, especially women. Brown (2001) however provides other reasons for this that many women find it relatively easy within the informal sector to care for their children, perform domestic chores and also to engage in their numerous economic activities.

Meanwhile it can be noted that the issue of unemployment could not be mentioned among the women. That is unemployment was not prevalent among the rural women understudy. From the results on the women’s main occupation, only 1.1 percent of the women were unemployed. About 98.9percent of the women had an income-generating activity no matter how small income could be generated. Oppong in Brown (2001) emphasizes that the majority of wives are in gainful employment and some of those who stayed at home earned money by trading, sewing or baking. Few wives feel that they could afford to depend entirely upon their husbands for support. The vast majority of 98 percent of the Mo women under study being engaged in income-generating activities goes to show that they had some measure of economic independence. Bukh (1979) and Benneh (1995) explain that the influence of husbands coupled with over-dependence on husbands is one of the factors that hinder women’s economic independence. However a critical analysis of the data shows that the women were breaking free from this tradition.

When the women were questioned on their ability to manage their own income-generating activities 97percent of them said they were able to do so. This indicates that the women had some capabilities in their economic activities. And probably because 97 percent of the women were able to manage their own jobs, and 63 percent of the women were capable of controlling or managing their own incomes, as many as 83 percent of the women were allowed by their husbands to decide on how to use their money and similarly 83 percent were also allowed by their husbands to cultivate for commercial purposes which could lead to a limited economic dependence on their husbands. In a cross tabulation the 13.7 percent of the women who reported to be fully economically dependent on their husbands did not have regular sources of income. This observation re-echoes the views of Greenstreet (1978) and Asante (1978) who maintain that the woman’s numerous and valuable economic activities enable her to enjoy a great deal of economic independence and equality. In addition, owning to the wife’s economic autonomy and her less dependence on the husband, the traditional dominance of the husband on the women could be reduced. The women’s financial contribution to the family’s budget could also enhance her power position in the home and therefore strengthening the women’s bargaining power.

On the issue of the women being allowed by their husbands to decide on how to use their money, as much as 83 percent of the women responded in the affirmative. This observation does not conform to the general view that while women are largely responsible for generating increases in farm incomes these increases are usually appropriated by men and put to uses that do not benefit the women and children. The trends are changing. The results show that the women were in control of their own income and its related activities.

On the type of savings done by the women, it can be realised that, the nature of the women’s occupation which is mainly small-scale businesses, their state of income source and probably their low level of education could influence the type of savings they do. The results on savings revealed that 62.3 percent of the women engaged in `table banking’ [saving money with individual agents, locally known as susu] with only 9 percent engaged in banking. It was also found that 25 percent did not engage in any type of savings at all. The women’s inability to engage in banking transactions, which has interest and loan incentives could impact on their progress of their small-scale businesses and their growth towards economic empowerment.

Another issue that could impede the progress of the women’s economic empowerment is their access to land. Although the results on access to land showed that almost 88 percent of the women had access to land for commercial purposes; results on the comparison of land owned by women to that of men showed that 28.4 percent of the women had their lands averagely comparable to the land owned by men, and 22.4 percent had small lands compared to men. Only 28.4 percent of the women said their lands could be largely compared to land owned by the average man. A contribution to the issue of land being an obstacle to women in farming is given by Awumbila (2001) and emphasized in the Women’s Manifesto [2004] that those who control land and its resources gain social and political power and authority hence women’s unequal land rights affect their access to other resources and their economic, social and political status. Nukunya in Awumbila (2001) also explains further that in patrilineal societies the women acquire land mainly through marriage and may lose them when the marriage ends. In places where the women could inherit land, the portion allotted to daughters is often smaller than to sons. Bukh (1979) Manuh (1990) and Benneh (1995) also add that the ownership of land is restricted for many women, as they have to rely on the `goodwill’ of lineage and family heads that are invariably males, for land. These gender-related problems have gone a long way to hinder women farmers’ agricultural and for that matter economic progress.

The women’s motivation to participate in any training programme to upgrade themselves and their career demonstrates their commitment to economic independence and for that matter empowerment. In a cross tabulation, Table 2 revealed that 94 percent of both the women with some formal education and those with no formal education desired to fully participate in any training programme that would be organised to upgrade or enhance their career. Such drive or willingness could go a long way to promote a high and faster rate of economic empowerment among the women.

The results demonstrate that despite a few drawbacks the women under study had a higher level of economic independence. Thus considering that:

• almost 99 percent of the women were engaged in income-generating activities;
• 97 percent of them were able to manage their own income-generating activities,
• 63 percent were capable of controlling their own income;
• 83 percent were allowed by their husbands to cultivate for commercial purposes;
• 83 percent were allowed by their husbands to decide on how to use their own money;
• 88 percent of the women had access to land for their agricultural purpose; and
• 94 percent of them strongly desired to fully participate in any training programme to upgrade themselves and their career,

one could conclude that the women were highly economically empowered. Meanwhile the women who found themselves at the most disadvantaged position, for instance the 13.7 percent of the women who reported to be totally economically dependent on their husbands and did not have any regular source of income need to be given some capacity building support to help reduce their level of dependence.

Table 2: The Level of Formal Education in Relation to the Women’s Willingness to Participate in Any Career Training Programme