IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ctwqxx/v37y2016i1p119-135.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Paradoxes of (dis)empowerment in the postcolony: women, culture and social capital in Ghana

Author

Listed:
  • Sylvia Bawa

Abstract

Women’s empowerment discourses in Africa involve contradictory desires from women on one hand and society at large on the other. This article argues that the traditional validation mechanisms for women’s identities are crucial avenues for analysing both the conceptions and experiences of empowerment. Drawing on primary ethnographic data, I analyse paradoxes in women’s empowerment discourses in postcolonial Ghanaian societies, where neoliberal discourses thrive side-by-side with collectivist–socialist cultural ideals. Using an example of social capital, gained largely through mothering, I suggest that, because women’s relationships with capital are structured by local socio-cultural and global economic structures and relations, the theorisation and application of the concept of empowerment need to recognise the complicated relationships (with capital) that women negotiate on a daily basis.

Suggested Citation

  • Sylvia Bawa, 2016. "Paradoxes of (dis)empowerment in the postcolony: women, culture and social capital in Ghana," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(1), pages 119-135, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:37:y:2016:i:1:p:119-135
    DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2015.1086636
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2015.1086636
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01436597.2015.1086636?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Akurugu, Constance Awinpoka & Jatoe, Mathias Mwinlabagna & Domapielle, Maximillian Kolbe, 2021. "Empowering rural women for sustainable development through the provision of water infrastructure in north-western Ghana," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 21(C).
    2. Mwiti, Fredah & Goulding, Christina, 2018. "Strategies for community improvement to tackle poverty and gender issues: An ethnography of community based organizations (‘Chamas’) and women's interventions in the Nairobi slums," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 268(3), pages 875-886.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:37:y:2016:i:1:p:119-135. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/ctwq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.