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Ghana: Education and Culture – The Question of Gender Role Change

Jamaine Abidogun, Missouri State University

This paper is based on research conducted at Madina, Ghana during 1997 and current secondary works on gender in Ghanaian culture. It analyzed the interaction of the formal education institution and the participants’ ethno-linguist cultures. One aspect was gender and education; demonstrating the effect of formal education’s influence as it interacted with indigenous gender roles. Research questions encompassed the interaction of formal education and indigenous cultures; focusing on elements of resistance, adaptation, and transformation.
Participant interpretations provided descriptions of resistance, adaptation, and transformation in their identification and formation of gender roles. Participants were drawn from a junior secondary school and the surrounding community of Madina. The accumulative effect was a push-pull and transforming societal response, that periodically and at times simultaneously moved closer to or further from Western models as transmitted through formal education or/and indigenous gender roles. Incidents of resistance, adaptation, and transformation demonstrated overall gravitation toward Western influences and away from indigenous influences regarding gender roles.