Ghanaian (Akan) women’s experiences of widowhood and property rights violations: An ethnographic inquiry

Abstract

This study, part of a larger ethnography, explores the interaction of national inheritance laws and local culture in the everyday lives of Ghanaian (Akan) women who have been widowed. Property ownership is fundamental to women’s economic survival, empowerment, and liberation from abusive relationships. Yet millions of women around the world, especially those in developing nations lose their rights to own, inherit, and manage property following the deaths of their husbands. This research took place in two cities and two villages each in the Ashanti and Brong-Ahafo regions. Methods included participant observation conducted over a four-month period in and around the homes of women who had been widowed and focused observations of women’s interactions with family members in the home. In-depth interviews conducted in Twi with 20 widows, five from each site, focused on women’s experiences of widowhood. Thirteen women described property rights violations occurring when they were vulnerable due to bereavement and/or widowhood rites, and resulting in long-term economic challenges for them and their children. Their experiences suggest that local, customary laws have constrained the implementation of national, progressive laws to eliminate gender discrimination in inheritance. Women also described their sources of resilience including social support from family and friends, spirituality, and their own advocacy for other women. We discuss implications for international social work, especially developing an understanding of local challenges and resources foundational to the design and implementation of effective, culturally sensitive policy, and intervention.

Keywords

Ghanaian (Akan) widows property rights violations resilience spirituality widowhood rites

This ethnographic study explores the interaction of national inheritance laws and local culture in the everyday lives of Ghanaian (Akan) women who have been widowed. Property ownership is fundamental to women’s economic survival, empowerment, and liberation from abusive relationships. Yet, millions of women around the world, especially those in developing nations such as India and Ghana, have their property rights violated; that is, they lose their rights to own, inherit, and manage property following the deaths of their husbands (Human Rights Watch, 2004; Roy and Tisdell, 2002). When they are widowed, many Akan women and their children lose their possessions and are evicted from their homes and land even though official statutory laws banning such practices have been in place for nearly three decades. For these women, the transition to widowhood is followed by a life of poverty. They lose economic security as well as a life partner and loved one (Cattell, 2003). It is not only women who bear the burden of property rights violations, it is their children, boys and girls alike, whose loss of educational opportunities and childhoods spent in poverty will impact the next generation. To the extent that property rights violations are widespread, they come at great cost not only to individual families but also to the continued social development of nations including Ghana.

Challenges and resources

We viewed women’s property rights violations through the dual lenses of intersectionality and resilience theories. Intersectionality theory considers the complexity of human experience including multiple, layered identities which result from social relations, history, and the operations of structures of power (Collins, 1990; McCall, 2005). Socially constructed categories of oppression and privilege, such as race, class, gender, and age, simultaneously interact to create unique life experiences for marginalized populations. Such social constructs form interlocking patterns of inequalities which serve as the bases for multiple systems of domination which affect people’s access to power and privilege, influence their social relationships, and shape their everyday experiences (e.g., Murphy et al., 2009).

Ghanaian widows, like widows in other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, may experience subordination and discrimination throughout life (Awusabo-Asare, 1990; Ewelukwa, 2002; Von Struensee, 2004). From birth, girls are constrained by gendered, stratified socialization processes. Characteristics such as virility, authority, power, leadership, and intelligence are encouraged in boys. Girls’ socialization focuses on submission to male authority, child rearing, and household chores (Boateng et al., 2006). Girls’ rights and opportunities to access resources such as education, food/nutrition, health, and economic support are limited relative to boys (Boateng et al., 2006). Such situations create social inequality from birth whereby girls have unequal access to valued resources, services, and positions in society (Kerbo, 2003). Property rights violations are one instance of the continuation of gender-based oppression into adulthood. These human rights violations are particularly devastating because they contribute to the impoverishment of women and their children including unmet basic needs for food, shelter, and education.

Yet, Ghanaian women are a diverse group with various personal, social, and legal resources to respond to property rights violations. International researchers have considered how sociocultural contexts and individuals’ internal resources shape resiliency; that is, the ability to function in the face of adversity (e.g., Ungar, 2010). For example, in parts of the world where rites of passage are observed, rituals may reinforce women’s lower status, or strengthen them to cope with bereavement and transition into a new phase of life as a widow. Other potential resources include Ghanaians’ strong cultural value of interconnectedness within the extended family (Brown, 1996). Spirituality and religious involvement also may be sources of resilience. Sixty-seven percent of Ghanaians report that they are practicing Christianity, 9% follow indigenous religions, 16% Islamic, and 8% report participation in other faiths (Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), 2008). Furthermore, Christian Ghanaians have claimed a spiritual and moral authority to challenge traditional practices (Shipley, 2009), potentially those which may undermine widows. Understanding potential resources, as well as challenges, experienced by Akan widows provides a foundation for designing and implementing effective, culturally sensitive policy and intervention.

Property rights within a Ghanaian cultural context

Ghana is a unitary republic with a democratically elected parliament and president. Sixty-five percent (65%) of Ghana’s population lives in rural areas (GSS, 2008). In Ghana, where women usually marry older men, widows may be faced with caring not only for themselves but also for children. A woman’s ability to care for herself and her children following the death of her husband may be directly related to issues of property rights. In Ghana, where subsistence farming supplemented by cash crops provides the livelihood for many families, access to natural resource-based assets (soil, home sites, crops, grazing, and forestland) and water is basic to survival and income production. Furthermore, ownership of these resources is politically significant and directly associated with power. Lack of direct access to natural resources and control over their use can contribute to the marginalization of women (Owen, 2001). It limits women’s productive roles, power, and influence in the household and the community at large, their opportunities to enter the market economy (Summerfield, 2006), and access to education and support services (Owen, 2001).

Customary laws and cultural practices

Customary law is a body of unwritten, shared, long standing and influential rules concerning personal status, social organizations, and communal resources in many parts of the developing world, including Ghana (Human Rights Watch, 2003). Many of these rules and principles that govern issues dealing with Akan marriage, property rights, succession, and inheritance have remained relatively stable for many years (Mensah-Sarbah, 1904). Akan families are matrilineal. By customary law, succession is through the female line, but inheritance starts with uterine brothers (brothers from the same mother) and nephews. Women are the last resort if there are no possible inheritable males. A person who inherits a family property cannot bequeath it to anyone without the collective decision by the family. In Akan terms, the successor holds the property in trust for the ancestors (Nananom nsamanfo), the living (ateasefo כ), and the future generations (nkyirimma). For the purposes of inheritance, wives and their children are not considered part of their husbands’ and fathers’ lineages. Property that is self-acquired; that is, purchased or gained by the man’s individual effort, can be willed or given as a gift to anyone. However, if the person dies intestate (without a will), as do many Akan men, any self-acquired property will go through the customary inheritance procedure, leaving out the widow and children. Thus, women may lose their rights to property when their relationships with their husbands end through death or divorce (Awusabo-Asare, 1990; Ewelukwa, 2002).

Customary laws for inheritance are embedded within the cultural context of Ghana including beliefs and practices related to marriage and the roles of wives. Within the Ghanaian home, the man is the head of the household and responsible for the economic support of all the household members. With this responsibility comes the “authoritative power” of control over resources including his wife’s (wives’) and children’s domestic labor. The husband, however, has no corresponding duty to labor for his wife. These asymmetrical obligations, where the wife has to contribute labor and the husband to provide economic support, in turn justify asymmetrical rights under customary law to property acquired during marriage including by the wife (Fenrich and Higgins, 2001). The consequence of such asymmetrical rights is that the proceeds of any effort of husband, wife, and/or children are by customary law the individual property of the man. These asymmetrical rights between husbands and wives in Ghana, especially among the Akans, are enshrined in the traditional saying, “כbaa tכ tuo a ɛtwere כbarima dan mu,” literally translated, “If a woman buys a gun, it is the man who keeps it.”

Certain customary practices such as widowhood rites may reflect and further perpetuate women’s lower status relative to men, undermining their entitlements including to property. Women typically are cared for by other widows from their husbands’ families during the rites. Widowhood rites vary somewhat but typically consist of rituals such as public crying/wailing for 15 days; reducing meals to once a day, cold water bathing three times a day, and sleeping on a mat instead of a mattress for 40 days; and dressing in black and avoiding suitors for at least a year (Korang-Okrah, 2011). Men do not observe rites following the deaths of their wives. Women who resist observing the rites may experience social ostracism and coercion from their husbands’ families. For example, a woman’s in-laws may threaten that his “saman” (ghost) will come back to haunt her if she does not perform the rites to honor him.¹ On the other hand, Akan widowhood rites also are considered rites-of-passage and performed for the woman’s purification, protection, and healing. From the moment of birth (coming from the ancestors) through death (a journey back to the ancestors), the Akan pass through various rites-of-passage which bind them culturally and spiritually to other members in the lineage (Aborampah, 1999). Thus, widowhood rites may be experienced by women as supportive, connecting them to others, or as oppressive, reinforcing their lower status and power.

Formal laws

Relatively recent formal laws exist side-by-side with older, customary laws and cultural practices. Chapter 12 of Ghana’s Constitution promises to protect fundamental human rights and freedoms regardless of race, place of origin, political opinion, color, religion, creed, or gender. Ghana has ratified more than 20 international human rights treaties. Prominent among them is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, signed on 17 July 1980 and ratified on 2 January 1986.

According to the Intestate Succession Law (Amendment, 1991) of Ghana, property rights violations include the unlawful ejection of a surviving spouse or child from the “matrimonial” home, depriving them of the use of property they shared with the deceased or otherwise entitled, and destroying or otherwise interfering with their use of that property. The 1985 provision of the Provisional National Defense Council Law (PNDCL 111, 1985) allows children, both sons and daughters, as well as wives to inherit the self-acquired property of deceased men who die intestate. In addition, section 3 of the law specifies that the spouse and children are entitled absolutely to the house and household chattels of the intestate (Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992).

Inconsistencies between formal statutes, customary laws and local cultural practices, however, have posed challenges to the implementation of formal laws such as PNDCL 111. Article 270(1) of the constitution of Ghana recognizes and guarantees the institution of chieftaincy, together with its traditional councils as established by customary law. In addition, Article 272 states that the National House of Chiefs shall undertake progressive study and codification of customary law to establish unified rules and eliminate “those customs and usages that are outmoded and socially harmful” (Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992: 165). Yet, Ghana is a diverse country with approximately 100 ethnic groups speaking over 50 dialects and languages (Ghana Statistical Service, 2008). This diversity means that customary laws differ significantly from community to community. This poses serious challenges to policy makers bent on developing institutions of the modern state among a population that is so ethnically diverse and largely illiterate (Akufo-Addo, 2002).

Current study

Relatively little qualitative/ethnographic research has explored the experiences of women who have been widowed in developing countries including Ghana. Ethnographic research facilitates understanding of the role of cultural contexts in shaping and constraining social policies. The aim of this article is to provide social workers with an overview of the experiences of Akan women who have been widowed and whose voices are not included in the existing literature. We consider various ways in which Akan widows navigate the complexities created by the mismatch and contradictions between statutory and customary inheritance laws within a cultural context including widowhood rites and the personal context of bereavement. Our specific research questions are as follows: (1) How do Akan women experience widowhood? (2) To what extent has PNDCL 111 alleviated their economic challenges? (3) What sources of support do they draw upon to meet the challenges of widowhood?

Method

This article is the first report from a larger ethnographic study of Akan widows.

Setting

This study took place in two regions of Ghana, the Ashanti and Brong-Ahafo regions which have a sizeable Akan population. The Akans, who speak Twi, constitute about 53% of Ghana’s population and are among the main linguistic groups (GSS, 2008). Research sites were the two regional capitals Kumasi and Sunyani, and two towns/villages, Kotei (Ashanti) and Nsuatre (Brong-Ahafo). These two regions were purposively selected because they are predominantly matrilineal Akan regions. Akans here typically observe traditional widowhood rites, and reports have been made of the violations of widows’ property rights (Robertson, 2010). The cities and villages within the two regions were chosen because they are similar to the larger regions in which they are embedded in terms of ethnicity and customary practices.

Participants

Participants were 20 Akan women who had been widowed within the last 10 years, five from each of the four sites. At each site, local women’s leaders acted as gatekeepers for introductions, recruitment, and continued contact with participants. The gatekeepers were Basic (Elementary) School teachers who were residents of those sites. We recruited a sample of women that maximized variation in rural/urban residence, age, social class, level of education, and religious affiliation. All women had been married within the Akan tradition and had not remarried since being widowed. They ranged in age from 30 to 81 years (M = 54.8, SD = 11.2). They had been married for 1 to 45 years (M = 24.4, SD = 13.0) and widowed from one month to 10 years (M = 5.7 years, SD = 3.9). At the time of their bereavements, 14 women were still parenting (eight women were raising children under 10 years of age including two who were pregnant). Ten women had never been to school and four had some basic, elementary-level education. Four women had post-secondary/vocational education, and two were university educated. Ten women lived in rural and 10 in urban areas. Seventeen widows were Christians, and three were Moslems. Thirteen women had monogamous marriages, and seven (four Christians and three Moslems) had polygamous marriages.

Researchers

Rose is an Akan and a native speaker of Twi. She completed her undergraduate education at the University of Ghana and served as Assistant Director in charge of research at the Girls’ Education Unit of the Ghana Education service, first Diocesan Women’s Development Coordinator for Sunyani Catholic Diocese, and Specialist Mathematics Teacher/organizer in the Sunyani Education District. She immigrated to the US 12 years ago to pursue graduate studies in Social Work. Wendy is a US citizen whose career focuses on building a more culture-inclusive understanding of diverse families’ well-being including through ethnographic research. She contributed to the study design, analysis/interpretation, and writing.

Procedures

Participant observation

During the four months of data collection, Rose spent time with local women’s leaders (the gatekeepers) who introduced her to participants. These indigenous women and Rose shared accommodations, food, transportation, and companionship as is culturally appropriate. The informal time spent together as part of the ethnographic methods allowed Rose to view the homes and communities of women who had been widowed, ask questions, and engage in conversation during everyday activities.

More focused observations occurred during Rose’s visits to each participant’s home. She engaged the women who were widowed, as well as other people in the household, in informal conservations about issues involving topics such as the owner of the property, inhabitants of the home, children, siblings, etc. She also observed widows’ interactions with others in the household, and the characteristics and conditions of their houses. Participant observations were recorded, daily, as field notes.

Interview

Following participant observation, Rose conducted individual, in-depth, semi-structured, audio and/or video recorded interviews with participants lasting 60–90 minutes. Most of the women were not familiar with and had not participated in formal interviews. As a cultural insider, Rose was able to communicate freely and establish rapport with them. She explained that our primary interest in talking with them was to allow their voices and stories to be heard. They were informed of the voluntary nature of their participation and confidentiality. The interviews were conversational in nature and took place in and around women’s homes, typically during daily activities. Women were asked to describe what happened after their husbands’ deaths, widowhood rites, their knowledge of PNDCL 111, their current situation, the meaning of widowhood for them, and the resources of support they draw upon for survival.

Data analysis and interpretation

This report focuses on the interview data. All interviews were transcribed verbatim in Twi by Rose and two Akan Basic School teachers from Sunyani. Emic codes were induced through repeated readings of the transcripts (Schwandt, 2001) and discussion between the teachers, Rose and Wendy. All transcripts were independently coded by all three Akans with disagreements resolved through discussions. Teachers also critiqued translations of excerpts from Twi to English. Peer debriefing with a Ghanaian social scientist and member checking with participants further enhanced the validity of our interpretations (Lincoln and Guba, 1985). Field notes from participant observation were used to contextualize and interpret the interviews and to describe women’s physical contexts.

Results²

How do Akan women describe their experiences of widowhood?

We consider property rights violations in the broader context of the lives of Akan women who have been widowed. Most of these violations occurred very soon after the women lost their husbands. In discussing their experiences of widowhood, women described vulnerable emotional and physical conditions resulting from bereavement and, in some cases, widowhood rites, which drained their resilience at the very time that some needed to actively assert their rights to property.

Bereavement

Human themes of grief and loss were prominent in the women’s narratives of their experiences. For example, Comfort, a 50-year-old, an urban accountant, described her bereavement:

… by God’s grace, I met my husband when I had lost both my parents to death. He then filled the gap and became my intimate friend as well … The vacuum his death created can never be filled. I have no one to talk to or share my worries and joys with and that makes me feel very sad and lonely.

Women also described their children’s bereavement. For example, 55-year-old Alberta, an urban teacher, described the challenge of responding to her children’s grief:

The kids have their own emotional periods … One day my small girl told me how a friend of hers came to her crying and alleging that her father mostly shouts at her. My daughter said she told her friend, “You are not serious. How I wish my father were alive to be shouting at me.” That made me realize the emotional challenges these kids also go through.

Widowhood rites

Ten women (three Moslems and seven Christians) observed the Akan widowhood rites-of-passage (Kunadie). They included women with various income and education levels, urban and rural residences, and length of marriages. The majority experienced the rites as dehumanizing and as reinforcing their lower status. For example, 59-year-old Regina, an urban teacher, described her experience:

We were two wives so we had two care takers who were with us for the 40 days of our confinement. For the 40 days, we ate once a day [at 2:00 PM], had a cold bath three times a day, wore only black clothes … The night before he was laid in-state for burial, we were asked to walk bare-footed three times around his house in the middle of the night to prove that we had not been unfaithful to him. I have learnt through my ordeal that going through the widowhood rites is a painful and an inhumane treatment of the widow.

Some women linked widowhood rites to women’s lower status. For example, Comfort explained:

I see the widowhood rites as an infringement on the woman’s rights, reducing women to something less than human, controlling their freedom and coercing them to go through the rites else they face consequences [e.g., social ostracism, harm from the husband’s ghost]. Therefore in fear many widows do that [rites] to avoid those consequences. Why don’t they do this to widowers? Haven’t they also lost their loved ones? So what is the difference? Widows shouldn’t have to do certain things because, eventually, those inhumane treatments will have a big toll on their lives.

Women reporting more positive experiences described closer and more supportive relationships with those women, typically widows from their husbands’ families, caring for them during the rites as well as less strict variants of the rites. Two women described widowhood rites as a source of support and social connection. For example, Joanna, a 40-year-old rural woman who engaged in petty trading, described her experience as:

Going through the widowhood rites taught me many things which I learned from the women who took care of me. They taught me things I never knew about the Akan culture. It really opened my eyes … and prepared me to stand on my own feet without the man. Sometimes I feel so sad, lonely and broken … when I remember what they taught me, that encourages me to move on … I have five children to take care of alone … nothing I do will bring my husband back.

The three Muslim women described widowhood rites that were less strict. For example, 68-year-old Gyinabu, a rural woman with no formal education or job, described her husband’s multiple wives as communicating and supporting each other, thus lessening the burden of recent widowhood:

We were three wives kept in our late husband’s room for 40 days. Our sister-in-law cooked and catered for us. We ate three times a day and bathed three times a day. We could wear any cloth but on the day of the funeral, they provided us with white cloth. After the 40th day, we were dispersed and each one went to our own homes.

Ten women refused to observe widowhood rites on religious grounds. Their decisions were supported by their families, who also were Christians, and their churches, especially Christian women’s groups. Their decisions apparently were respected by their in-laws, but they all spoke about the negative consequences of the rites.

Economic issues

Economic struggles loomed large for all 20 women following their husbands’ deaths. At the time of the interview, only seven women could be described as economically secure with a consistent source of income. Five other women had some source of income from petty trading. Eight women had no jobs or regular source of income. Six of these eight women had to withdraw their children from school because they were unable to continue paying school fees.

In response to the question, “What happened after your husband’s death,” 13 widows described bitter or problematic relationships with their in-laws, newly emerging or intensifying after their husbands died and related to property disputes. For example, Selena, a 56-year-old rural woman with no formal education or job, described good relationships with her in-laws before her husband died. She described her subsequent experience with her mother-in-law:

My husband was a cocoa farmer before we got married. … Being the oldest child, his mother asked him to work on the farm so he would always have money to take care of himself. We were married for 17 years and all those years I was with him on the farm. We had a very good relationship with his mother … When he died, we had six children and I was pregnant with the seventh child … After his 40 days’ anniversary my mother-in-law called me to a room and told me … “The cocoa farm belongs to me, your husband was just the caretaker.” She hired a new caretaker for the farm and drove my six children and me out of that farm.

Although all 14 women who had children at home at the time of their husbands’ deaths described challenges related to child rearing, the eight women who had children under 10 years reported particular hardships. For example, Angelina, a 51-year-old rural woman with no formal education or job, described her experience of raising her five children single handedly and in poverty:

My greatest challenge now is my children’s education and my greatest worry is poverty. I have never worked anywhere apart from farm work. I never went to school … after marriage, my husband took me to Sefwi to work on the cocoa farm … My husband’s family gave his cocoa farm as collateral for loan for his funeral so I don’t get any money from there … Sometimes, I go to bed on empty stomach because the little I get, I give to the children first. Poverty is crippling everything that I am supposed to do, especially for my children’s education. … All my six children are in school but … I couldn’t pay for their school fees. The school authorities have … allowed me to pay in installments, which I am even struggling to pay. Hmm, I know God is in control.

To what extent did PNDC Law 111 alleviate widows’ economic challenges?

PNDCL 111 provides tools to ensure women’s rights to property and thus, in principle, should ease women’s economic burdens. Eighteen of the women had some knowledge of the law. Yet, at the time of the interview, 13 had lost property that they had held in common with their husbands during their marriages. These property rights violations included eviction from their homes and seizure of land and essential household items by in-laws. (For three additional women, the issue of property rights violations was irrelevant because these impoverished families had no property to dispute.) Six of the women who had lost property were living in substandard housing; typically unfinished mud huts without indoor plumbing or electricity. Two had returned to their maternal homes, and the eldest widow, 81-year-old Betty, was living in a rural area with an adult child. Three of the other women were renting apartments, and one was living in her own home.

When asked about PNDCL 111, only two women (both literate and from urban areas) described successfully applying the law to assert their rights to property. Kathy, a 48-year-old baker and high school graduate, was one of the two widows who were successful in applying the law. She described her story:

I worked with the law. Although my husband did not make a will, he had savings in his SSNIT (social security) account. He had already done the divisions on his social security and that was where the inheritor [husband’s brother] was disappointed because his name was not there. Therefore he didn’t get anything from my husband.

Two other women tried unsuccessfully to apply the law. Regina described her experience:

The law didn’t help me as I thought. The money I was supposed to get is not yet paid to me. The inheritor was nowhere to be found and because he has used the money, he wasn’t willing to go to court with us. The court is also not really enforcing issues to get that amount for us . … they got only a small part of the total amount for us but it has taken really quite a long time, eight years!

Fourteen other women indicated that they knew something about the law but did not want to apply it for various reasons. These reasons included their inability to read, their perception that the law is too complicated to understand, their feelings of embarrassment about speaking out publicly, their reluctance to harm their children’s relationships with their father’s families, and the expense of hiring an attorney. Selena lamented:

Everything is about money. Where is that money coming from? To take your case to someone to plead on your behalf you need money, hmm! My husband was a farmer who worked on his mother’s farm … she has taken over the farm, and unless I get a lawyer, how do I tackle such a case? These lawyers want money and if I don’t have the amount they charge nothing will work out well.

What sources of support do these women draw upon to meet the challenges of widowhood?

Family and friends

All women reported that without the emotional and social support of their family, friends, and church members, they could not have survived the trauma of bereavement. Although the women’s family or friends may not have had money to give, their physical presence coupled with their emotional and social support and communication greatly helped in stabilizing them emotionally. During their bereavement, most women preferred the presence of their own parents and siblings who acted as guides and advocates. For example, the family members of two of the women told their husbands’ families that they would not allow their daughters/sisters to observe the widowhood rites, which they considered to be abusive. For example, 43-year-old Pamela, a teacher from the city, described her experiences of being supported by her family and friends:

My parents contributed a lot to my survival. My family, brothers and sisters, supported me to stand strong through the early years of that tragedy. They told my husband’s family that we are Christians and would not let me go through the [widowhood] rites. My church members and the church activities I got involved in also occupied me . … My colleagues also contributed greatly to my survival. When I go to work and listen to their funny stories, my mind gets off my worries and that helps me a lot.

Widows and their children also received some material support from family members. Although paternal relatives typically recognized and expressed love for their sons’, brothers’ or cousins’ children, in these matrilineal families these children typically are seen as “belonging to,” i.e., the economic responsibility of, their mothers’ families. Nonetheless, paternal relatives, especially uncles, sometimes stepped in to help their deceased relatives’ children with school fees and basic necessities. For example, Comfort described:

A cousin of my husband was sympathetic and empathetic to my case. He defended me whenever they [husband’s relatives] went for family meetings and whatever they plotted, he came to tell me . … he helped me out immensely, especially with financial support for the kids’ school fees.

Yet, economic challenges could be significant for both paternal and maternal uncles and other family members who themselves were raising children and had few resources to spare.

Religion and spirituality

All 20 women described their relationship with God as well as their quest for meaning in the challenges confronting them. After their husbands’ death, life became so unbearable for some women that they felt their only resource was to strengthen their relationship with God. Some women questioned God as to why their husbands died. Some described that in their quest for answers, they came to understand that God does love them and that death is natural. They became “healed” by these “answers” from God and began to get more involved in church and community activities because they felt their lives had a purpose. Daniela, a 59-year-old urban teacher, described:

It’s God. It’s just by His Grace. I wouldn’t have survived. The love I have for my husband could have destroyed even my faith in God when he died. But it has been 10 months since he died. God’s ways are not our ways. … I believe God’s time is the best and God does not hate me. It is in the Bible that God will never give us what we cannot handle. I know my burden is heavy, but I believe God will give me the strength to carry it through.

Leadership and advocacy roles

In response to the question of what advice they would give to other widows, four urban women, Kathy, Comfort, Philomena, and Monica (age 59, with no formal education), indicated that they had already taken it upon themselves to educate and support new widows. For instance, Philomena visited other widows who did not know about PNDCL 111 to help them to understand how it could work for them:

What I do is to go to some widows I know, who have no idea that the law exists, and talk to them about how it can help them. I think that widows, especially those uneducated, should be educated on this law so that they can claim their rights. Had it not been the fact that I am literate and have knowledge about the PNDCL111 … my rights would have been neglected. Thus, all widows need to know that it is their right to use the law to claim what is due them.

Discussion

Social workers throughout the world are increasingly embracing international perspectives and roles. Much of this work focuses on macro, policy level issues. From this perspective, Ghana is a successful case because progressive laws to protect women from property rights violations have been in place for decades. Yet, the women in this study continue to describe property rights violations following the deaths of their husbands. A contribution of the current study is to focus attention on the linkages (or lack thereof) of the macro level laws and policies to the everyday experiences of those people whose lives these laws and policies are intended to improve. The current study suggests that to successfully address human rights violations we need to understand not only official perspectives as instantiated in formal laws and policies but also local customary laws, beliefs, and practices that exist side-by-side with the official laws. In other words, we must understand how progressive policies may be integrated with local practices and cultural realities.

Nearly three decades after the implementation of PNDC Law 111, property rights violations emerged as a significant challenge (or risk factor) contributing to the impoverishment of women and their children. Indeed, 13 women reported property rights violations soon after their husbands’ deaths. Although most women expressed some knowledge of PNDCL 111, only two were willing or able to draw upon this formal, progressive law to resist their loss of property. Many, including those with education and jobs, did not have the emotional strength, motivation, or economic resources during their bereavement to resist customary laws and practices. In a context in which many people (men and women, married and unmarried) struggle to meet their basic needs, many widows participating in the present study and their children were further disadvantaged and disenfranchised by customary laws.

Yet, Akan widows did survive with varying levels of well-being through their own personal strength, determination, spirituality, and social resources. The experiences of Akan widows illustrate how women’s multiple social identities may not only put them at risk but also support their resilience. In particular, they suggest culturally specific sources of spiritual and social resilience. Seventeen of the women in this study identified themselves as active Christians as well as Akan widows. For some women, traditional widowhood rites emerged as a risk factor, physically isolating them, undermining their physical strength, and reinforcing their lower status at the very time when they needed to actively resist the violation of their property rights. A number of Akan women who were Christians drew upon faith-based social and spiritual resources to forego widowhood rites they considered to be ritualistic and abusive. Consistent with other reports of the successful challenge of traditional practices by Christian Ghanaians (Shipley, 2009), the decision of Akan Christian women to forgo widowhood rites on religious grounds appears to have been respected by community members.

The experiences of Akan widows also underscore the importance of examining within group variation and avoiding overgeneralizations; especially when advocating for the cessation or continuance of social, ritual, and spiritual practices. In this study, widows’ experiences of widowhood rites varied. Most widows, (15 of the 20), viewed or experienced the rites as dehumanizing and abusive, a reinforcement of their lower status. In some cases, however, two women experienced widowhood rites as connecting them more firmly to others who have experienced the loss of a spouse, and helping them make an important transition into a new phase of life. In the cases of the Akan widows in our study, the severity of the rites as well as nature of the relationships between the newly widowed women and their caregivers seemed to influence whether these rites were experienced as traumatic or healing.

The case of Ghana also illustrates the need for social workers, formal policy makers, and local leaders to work hand-in-hand in tackling significant human rights issues. Our research suggests Akan widows must face a variety of obstacles to assert their property rights during their bereavement. These obstacles include illiteracy, fear of being ostracized, fear of severing relationships between their children and the children’s paternal family, interference by extended family, and limitations in access to justice. An overarching obstacle, however, is the observance of deeply ingrained customary laws of succession which discriminate against widows. To tackle this challenge, government policy makers may need to go beyond the design of public policy and formal laws to work with local authorities, such as the Chiefs and Queen Mothers, and religious leaders, to implement workable, practical policies which can bring changes to the lives of women who are widowed and their children. Customary laws, after all, are not necessarily static, but can evolve with changing social conditions (Comaroff and Kim, 2011). Social workers in Ghana can play key roles in helping tribal, religious and national leaders to reconcile customary and formal laws to protect the property rights of women and their children.

Limitations and future research

Our research has many limitations. First, it was conducted within one of Ghana’s diverse ethnic groups. Future research needs to examine the extent to which challenges and sources of support experienced by the Akan widows in this study transfer not only to Akan widows in other communities but also to widows in other ethnic groups. Second, our sample was both small and diverse. Future research is needed to explore systematically the intersection of women’s level of education, rural or urban residence, and generational differences in widows’ experiences. Next, future research needs to examine the extent of property rights violations throughout Ghana. Although property rights violations in Ghana have been recognized by human rights groups and formal laws have been enacted, suggesting a relatively widespread problem, there are no data available addressing the scale of the problem, and any variation related to residency, length of marriage, etc. Finally, our research is only a first step in addressing women’s property rights violations. Future research needs to design, implement, and evaluate interventions to enhance communication across national and local leaders to support widows and their children.

Footnotes

Notes

References

Aborampah

(1999) Women’s roles in the mourning rituals of the Akan of Ghana. Ethnology 38(3): 257.

Akufo-Addo NAD (2002) Challenges of operating a system of legal pluralism in Ghana. Foreign Minister, Attorney-General & Minister of Justice, Nigeria Speech at Berlin, Germany. Available at http://politicalquotes.org/taxonomy/term/30192 .

Awusabo-Asare

(1990) Matriliny and the intestate succession law of Ghana. Canadian Journal of African Studies 24(1): 1–16.

Boateng JK, Adomako-Ampofo A, Flanaga CC, et al. (2006) Gender socialization of pre-teen youths in Ghana: Alternative approaches for extension. Paper presented at the 22nd Annual Conference of the Association of International Agricultural & Extension Education (AIAEE) at Clearwater Beach, Florida.

Brown CK (1996) Gender roles in household allocation of resources and decision-making in Ghana. In: Ardayfio-Schanndorf E (ed.) The Changing Family in Ghana. pp. 21–41. Accra: Ghana Universities Press.

Cattell

(2003) African widows: Anthropological and historical perspectives. Journal of Women & Aging 15(2/3): 49–66.

Collins

(1990) Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, Boston: Unwin Hyman.

Comaroff

Kim

(2011) Anthropology, theology, critical pedagogy: A conversation with Jean Comaroff and David Kyuman Kim. Cultural Anthropology 26(2): 158–178.

Constitution of Ghana (1992) Intestate Succession Law (PNDCL 111), 1985. Constitution of the Fourth Republic of Ghana. Accra: Ghana Publishing Co.

10.

Constitution of Ghana (1992) Intestate Succession (Amendment) Law (PNDCL 264), 1991.

11.

Constitution of the Fourth Republic of Ghana. Accra: Ghana Publishing Co.

12.

Ewelukwa

(2002) Post-Colonialism, gender, customary injustice: Widows in African societies. Human Rights Quarterly 24(2): 424–486.

13.

Fenrich

Higgens

(2001) Promise Unfulfilled: Law, culture and women's inheritance rights in Ghana. Human Rights Quarterly 25(2): 257–341.

14.

Ghana Statistical Service (2008) Ghana Living Standards Survey of the 5th Round (GLSS 5), Accra, Ghana: Ghana Statistical Service.

15.

Human Rights Watch (2003) Double standards: Women’s property rights violations in Kenya. Human Rights Watch 15(5A): 1–54.

16.

Human Rights Watch (2004) Women’s property rights violations in sub-Saharan Africa. Available at: http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/women/property/qna.htm (accessed 19 February 2014).

17.

Kerbo

(2003) Social Stratification and Inequality, NY: McGraw-Hill.

18.

Korang-Okrah R (2011) Risk and resilience: Ghanaian (Akan) widows and property rights. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.

19.

Lincoln

Guba

(1985) Naturalistic Inquiry, Newbury Park, NJ: Sage.

20.

McCall

(2005) The complexity of intersectionality. Signs 30(3): 1771–1800.

21.

Mensah-Sarbah J (1904) Fanti Customary Law: A Brief Introduction to the Principles of the Native Laws and Customs of the Fanti and Akan Districts of the Gold Coast. 2nd ed. London: William Clowes and Sons, Ltd. [Electronic Version].

22.

Murphy

Hunt

Zajicek

(2009) Incorporating Intersectionality in Social Work Practice, Research Policy and Education, Washington, DC: NASW Press.

23.

Owen M (Consultant) (2001) Widowhood: Invisible women, secluded or excluded. Women 2000. Published by the Division for the Advancement of Women/DESA. Available at http://www.unwomen.org/.

24.

Robertson

(2010) News from Africa: Ghana widows in historic march. Widows’ Rights International 16: 1–4.

25.

Roy

Tisdell

(2002) Property rights in women’s empowerment in rural India: A review. International Journal of Social Economics 29(3/4): 315–334.

26.

Schwandt

(2001) Dictionary of Qualitative Inquiry, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

27.

Shipley

(2009) Comedians, pastors, and the miraculous agency of chrisma in Ghana. Cultural Anthropology 24(3): 523–552.

28.

Summerfield G (2006) Gender equity and rural land reform in China. In: Jaquette JS and Summerfield G (eds) Women and Gender Equity in Development Theory and Practice: Institutions, Resources and Mobilization. Durham, US: Duke University Press, pp. 137–158.

29.

Ungar M (2010) Cultural dimensions of resilience among adults. In: Reich JW, Zautra AJ and Hall JS (eds) Handbook of Adult Resilience. New York, NY: The Guilford Press, pp. 404–426.

30.

Von Struensee V (2004) Widows, AIDS, Health and Human Rights in Africa: Case Study from Tanzania. Available at: http://www.heart-intl.net/HEART/050107/Widows,AIDS.pdf.