Women Academics From Ghana

"As the leading science and technology University in Ghana, nobody is going to be left behind as far as our delivery of quality service is concerned."

"I want to be able to look up as I walk and see dignity in the place of my birth. All of us should want that."

"I shared Nkrumah’s belief in and vision for the integration of different ethnic groups on the continent, I stated in my play Foriwa (1967) through the character Labaran, “Who is a stranger anywhere in these times in whose veins the blood of this land flows?”"

"Everyone’s talent should be exercised for the good of the whole of society, because [w]hat we cannot buy is the spirit of originality and endeavour which makes a people dynamic and creative."

"The Drama Studio came as a sudden answer to a problem I had been having, starting the theatre programme."

"I suddenly saw …[w]e needed a programme to develop playwriting and…that led to… the Ghana Experimental Theatre."

"Suddenly in 1951 I started…creative writing seriously."

"Thank you for meeting with me today so that we can discuss the development of literary broadcasting in Ghana and your experiences of it. I am glad that you asked for us to meet here, in the home of my mother Efua Sutherland, as it was home, of course, not only for me but also for you. So we should be able to look at the trajectory of our lives since we were young around this place and how literature has shaped our lives in so many different ways. Welcome."

"Into us a child is born."

"You will have a way which you would need to design the thing, you get to a climax and you need to stay up there and let people go home with that feeling of patriotism and so on."

"It was an important initiative because it opened up space for women to participate in public life. In the 60s there were many affirmative initiatives to ensure that women were represented in Parliament."

"For example, recently in Ghana, artisanal salt miners fought against a company that gained the right to exploit salt industrially in a large lagoon without paying attention to the people who, for thousands of years, made a living from mining artisanal on a small scale. This is one of the most recent interesting initiatives. Because of all these years of deprivation, small property owners are starting to organize themselves better in popular movements and are becoming more effective than they were."

"There are many interesting initiatives being developed. There is a movement in several African countries to combat land grabbing. In many countries, there is a recovery of lands that were appropriated on a large scale. They are sabotaging activities, rejecting work and even sometimes destroying harvests. This is related to the idea that the government is not paying attention to the means of subsistence of these people. So they have to, basically, take care of themselves."

"There is, for example, no system that allows women to be registered on land. But if we only do this, without paying due attention to credit and technology considerations, women will have rights to the land only nominally, but will not have them substantially. Therefore, it is very important to see that it is not just a punctual act, but a series of interconnected questions."

"However, some of these policies were very limited because there was talk of gender inequality, but women's rights affected many interconnected spheres that could not be separated. If one focuses solely on one aspect and ignores the rest, the rights of women will not be concreted."

"Due to him, in the first years of independence there were many social and economic public policies to support women. The government advocated universal education, for example, which ensured that many children went to school."

"For a long period of time, I paid attention to gender inequalities. Many governments over the years have made efforts to address the inequality agenda with some success. In the anticolonial struggle in Ghana, women were very active."

"There are no policies that consider women as farmers. Then women are left aside and a cycle of disadvantages is perpetuated. It is not an economic question, but a matter of citizenship and rights. Anyone who declares themselves feminist cannot fail to recognize the connection between the rights of women and the right to the land."

"Without land control, women are second-class citizens. They also deny the right to work as farmers, because it is unthinkable to be a farmer without access to land."

"In Ghana, women produce in their communities until they get married. To live with their spouses, they leave their communities and go abroad in the new community and access to the land is mediated by their husbands. Then, when women grow old, if they don't have any men, they can lose access to the land. If they get divorced, they lose it automatically."

"A system in which some people do not have full access, control or possession of the land can only be uneven. According to the law, everyone can have access to the land, but there is discrimination regarding how to access the land, which affects women, young people and immigrants as well."

"I believe that the land is connected with many fights. The main reason is that we are an agrarian country and the land is a crucial resource. For us, the land is identity, the land where we live is part of who we are. They may have political control."

"Most importantly: we have to support women in agriculture because many times they are not the only ones producing food, even though they are involved in all the productive activities that ensure the survival of the entire family."

"We also have to consider labor concerns in agriculture. Many workers received little and came to agriculture as a transitory activity, from which they had to be released quickly. We have to solve this. And there is also a need to solve the credit problem in rural areas. Many small owners have deaths and are very common in cases of suicide caused by deaths."

"Therefore, there are many complicated issues that we have to face to ensure food sovereignty. The first step is to guarantee the access of small producers to the ground for their own production, on the ground for the market. Secondly, we have to guarantee the questions surrounding the land posession. Some groups of farmers, especially women, cannot independently acquire land for agriculture."

"But there is the mistake of deciding that it is not necessary to produce [other things] because, if you produce raw materials for export, you can earn enough money to buy food. So many farmers are not encouraged to continue producing and are not investigating how to produce, store, process and improve food security. Agriculture focuses on commodities."

"Africa is a continent of farmers, of small producers who do not have a vast production. Which doesn't mean that this is a bad strategy, because I believe that small-scale agriculture is promising and often undervalued. For example, Ghana has become a world leader in cocoa production based on small-scale agriculture. This should teach us that small farmers can produce successfully for the market."

"I believe there is a reason when we say that agriculture is increasing, but some of the most basic food security questions have not been addressed. In a country like Ghana, there are common illnesses related to food shortages and some people, at certain times of the year, do not have access to food. This is a very serious problem, particularly for children and women."

"Women's rights affect many interconnected spheres that cannot be separated. If one focuses only on one aspect and ignores the rest, women's rights are not realized."

"Anyone who declares himself/herself to be a feminist cannot fail to recognize the connection between women's rights and the right to land."

"The struggle for land is essentially feminist."

"Feminist don't only fight for their welfare but to make the entire society better, the only way to reduce the ill thoughts about feminism and it's goals is to encourage more young women to openly take part in the worthy cause."

"Sustainable development cannot be achieved without addressing the structural inequalities that persist in our societies."

"We must center the voices and experiences of marginalized communities in our quest for social justice."

"State's lack of attention to inequality and oriented petriachal rule as an underpinning viable that requires remedial action to provoke viable state society relations."

"Women are forgotten individuals with disproportionate level of income due to poverty and deprivation."

"Among the less educated, few desired to further their education, preferring instead to work and save their money. As they saw it, you went to school to acquire skills that would increase your earnings, but you could achieve the same results by working hard and saving your money. Almost all the newer residents I interviewed lived in rented or subsidized accommodation and eschewed home ownership."

"It was usual for a man to arrive first and to send for a spouse and children later after establishing himself, although there were also women who had arrived by themselves as autonomous migrants. The former occupations in Ghana of newer residents ranged from petty traders, artisans and schoolteachers to junior civil servants, although there were also a sprinkling of university graduates among them. However in general, newer residents were less educated than the older residents."

"They were also the people who were active in the various community organizations that they had helped set up. Newer residents consisted of men and women some of whom had previously lived in Nigeria, Gabon or another African country. They had arrived in Canada by way of Italy, Belgium or Holland, often with no valid documents (see also Konadu-Agyemang on “step-wise migration” in this issue)."

"More than sixty percent of the older residents I interviewed in Toronto were fairly settled in their jobs in plants, factories and the service sector. They owned their own homes, and all of them had acquired Canadian citizenship and called themselves Ghanaian-Canadians. While they still maintained links with relatives in Ghana and had gone back several times to visit, they seemed fairly settled into their lives in Canada and were at the stage in their lives when their children were beginning to enter college."

"This has resulted in fewer women taking higher positions, since male counterparts who have the power do not want to relinquish it."

"Ghana has underperformed in legislating the Affirmative Action Bill."

"And they have served at the continental and international level; yet, Ghana still lags behind."

"Ghana should give women the opportunity to take up prominent roles if the country wishes to experience development."

"I don’t believe that you would find any institution in the world where concurrently, the Vice-Chancellor, the Registrar, the Chancellor, the Chair of Counsel, the Chief Academic Officer and the Legal Counsel are all female."

"Last year, there was a hike when we had a trio of female principal officers appointed or come into office at the University of Ghana. This was the first not only for Ghana, but in the world."

"There are a lot of qualified persons in the country, with women not being an exception. It is a positive thing that should be encouraged."

"I am pleased with how women are taking over male-dominated roles in society."

"We have a lot of qualified women in Ghana."

"Higher education is dynamic. Therefore, the kind of skills set needed by our students some two decades ago are not the same as contemporary times."