Finding the Woman’s Power in the Patriarchal Society through the Lens of Cultural Practices and Beliefs of the Kasena Nankana Municipality.

Abstract

The study explores and assesses the impact of cultural practices and beliefs on the empowerment of women within the Kasena Nankana Municipality. The focus was to examine how these cultural practices and beliefs in the patriarchal society discriminate against women and female children. The study also investigates the perceptions of community members towards the empowerment of women.  Under empowerment of women, the study narrowed on the decision making rights of women, how women effect their own desired outcome and women’s accessibility and ownership of productive resources although the study acknowledge other forms of women empowerment.  The study also investigated the perceptions held by the community members towards women empowerment and empowered women. During the conduct of the study, the study made a discovery of an interesting revelation about the belongingness of a woman in the communities of the research area.

The study adopted qualitative research strategy and the research tools were developed under cross sectional research design. Employing both convenient and simple random sampling techniques to select participants, data gathered from the fields were analysed thematically.

The significance of the study cannot be over emphasized because it has been pointed out by UNDP (2003) that attempting to achieve the MDGs without promoting women empowerment and gender equality will both raise the costs and decrease the likelihood of achieving the other goals. Hence, the study sought to ascertain the cultural obstacles that impeded the realization of Women Empowerment under the MDG 3. In this case, policy makers can put measures in place to tackle these obstacles for community development. According to CARE (2010) improving women with health, knowledge and skills is not enough to empower them, women must also contend with social structures, cultural traditions and personal relationships that affect their success.

The study’s main findings were that; women in the study have inadequate sense of empowerment and this is due to cultural ascription of gender roles and the woman has no strong connection to any culture structure. The study further highlighted that, gender socialization perpetuates society’s expectations of what a woman is supposed to do in the societies.

Keywords: Gender Equality and Equity, Women’s Human Right, Gender Discrimination, Patriarchy, Culture