Sexual Complementarity in Traditional Ghanaian Society

Christine Oppong's 1983 edition is a forceful reminder that the contemporary intellectual challenge for those who have studied African women is to take a more ethnographic, focused and integrated approach in our work. Rather than focus on macro-political and economic problems and how these are reflected in the experiences of women, Oppong and the other authors have chosen to look at detailed realities and day-to-day interactions between males and females. I agree with the major point raised by the collection, which is that those approaches which portray women in isolation from domestic and public interactions with men are methodologically weak. Therefore, it is refreshing to see the four thematic approaches of this book: (i) male / female complementarity; (2) sexual bargaining and conflicts; (3) male bias; and (4) female autonomy. The attempts of our authors to provide comparative and case-study data to facilitate an integrated look at informal male / female relations in West Africa must be congratulated. In adopting this sociological and process-oriented approach, the contributors have left it to the individual case-studies to raise particular issues of significance to certain countries. Since most of these studies deal with Ghana, there is a specific country focus against which other areas can be compared. This too is quite appropriate. The opening chapters of this valuable book provide an overview of the divergence between male and female life cycles based on such cultural assumptions as: age differences at marriage and length of married-life; patterns of work involvement at specific stages in the life cycle of males and females; and the socio-economic and cultural supports for male longdistance and female short-distance migration patterns. Moreover, it is quite clear is that the degree of Islamicization in a particular country has a major impact on female health and mortality, sexuality and marriage, literacy, labor force, and domestic participation

Autonomy · Complementarity (molecular biology) · Ethnography · Political science · Politics · Sociology · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Law · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare

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