I'm a closet feminist. Don't tell anyone.

Heard this on Sweet Melodies Christian radio while I was in a waiting room today.

After returning home from church, a man immediately approaches his unsuspecting wife and hefts her up onto his shoulders. He then proceeds to go about his normal business around the house. Eventually, the man’s wife asks him what, pray-tell, is going on. “Pastor,” he replies “ has told us to always carry with us our sorrows and our burdens.”

Which reminds me of the Akan proverb: “If you stumble upon a brawling couple, don’t make any hasty judgments, for it is only the husband who knows what the wife has done to him.”

Most of my perceptions of relationships here have been in the negative. That is, the guys I live with at the hostel are away from their wives. In the case of my roommate, because traveling four or five countries to the left is prohibitively expensive, he won’t see his wife or two year old daughter for two years. And I have the nerve to curse the stars for being separated from my girlfriend (who doth teach the torches to burn bright) for five month intervals.

There are chauvinist elements of Ghanaian culture just like there are chauvinist elements of American culture. A few months ago, I rode to a beach party on a bus with a group of guys from Commonwealth Hall and three or four female residents of Volta Hall. Commonwealth boys’ moniker, the Vandals, is pretty accurate. From campus to the beach, the bus roared with bawdy and aggressive songs, some pretty clever, others less so, especially, I imagine, if you were one of the young women in the backseat. One song involved a call and response, and guys took turns ad libbing a quick line about what they “do.” Eventually a finger speared out in my direction; the song’s familiar and now dreaded refrain crumbled beneath me: “Oboruni, what do you DO?” Heads swiveled towards my rapidly shrinking person. My head feels empty, like Dodge City before the shootout empty. Then a mental spasm and tentatively: “I steal your girlfriends?” That satisfied them. They went back to singing. I went back to looking inconspicuous. Judge me if you like, but “I respect all women as equals” didn’t fit the beat.

Gender equity under the law and in political representation is a big issue here. A large coalition of groups secured the passage of a domestic violence bill just a few years ago, and a law providing women some protection of their inheritance rights is on the books. President Mills pledged to fill 40% of appointed government posts with women. Last I heard, he was well short of that number, though that could’ve changed by now. The Speaker of Parliament, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and several ministers are women. 19 of Ghana's 209 MPs are women (9%), which is just slightly below the percentage of female representatives in the legislatures of South Carolina (0 in the Senate, 17 in the House, 10%, rank among US states: 50) or Pennsylvania (Senate: 10; House 34; 14%; rank: 46).

You can’t study agricultural policy here without taking gender into account. The majority of food crop farmers are women, and food crop farmers are the poorest segment of the population. Male farmers have greater access to land, labor, capital, and extension services. Men are often responsible for providing the starch in meals (like maize), but women are expected to produce the food for the soup (vegetables, leaves, etc).This is on top of any labor obligation they might have to family members or a husband and on top of the tremendous amount of labor necessary for the social reproduction of the household.

There are direct implications for development policy. Take for instance the use of Gross Domestic Product as shorthand for the extent of country’s development. Ghana had set a goal of becoming a middle income country with a GDP per capita of $1000 by 2015. (I think that target has been put aside; the current GDP per capita is about $500.) The government is going to prioritize those activities that contribute to GDP, that is to national aggregate growth. That means that women’s domestic work isn’t considered work. It has no “value” because it hasn’t been assigned a monetary value. Cutting the health care budget might make sense from the aggregate growth perspective, but only if you ignore the fact that it’s going to increase the burden on primary care givers, who in most cases are female. The examples go on, from promoting cash crops over food crops to moving from traditional to freehold land tenure.

I just say good thing gender isn’t an issue in America. Right?