BackgroundThe importance of men's involvement in facilitating women’s access to skilled maternal healthcare in patriarchal societies such as Ghana is increasingly being recognised. However, few studies have been conducted to examine men’s involvement in issues of maternal healthcare, the barriers to men’s involvement, and how best to actively involve men. The purpose of this paper is to explore the barriers to and opportunities for men’s involvement in maternal healthcare in the Upper West Region of Ghana.MethodsQualitative focus group discussions, in-depth interviews and key informant interviews were conducted with adult men and women aged 20–50 in a total of seven communities in two geographic districts and across urban and rural areas in the Upper West Region of Ghana. Attride-Stirling’s thematic network analysis framework was used to analyse and present the qualitative data.ResultsFindings suggest that although many men recognise the importance of skilled care during pregnancy and childbirth, and the benefits of their involvement, most did not actively involve themselves in issues of maternal healthcare unless complications set in during pregnancy or labour. Less than a quarter of male participants had ever accompanied their wives for antenatal care or postnatal care in a health facility. Four main barriers to men’s involvement were identified: perceptions that pregnancy care is a female role while men are family providers; negative cultural beliefs such as the belief that men who accompany their wives to receive ANC services are being dominated by their wives; health services factors such as unfavourable opening hours of services, poor attitudes of healthcare providers such as maltreatment of women and their spouses and lack of space to accommodate male partners in health facilities; and the high cost associated with accompanying women to seek maternity care. Suggestions for addressing these barriers include community mobilisation programmes to promote greater male involvement, health education, effective leadership, and respectful and patient-centred care training for healthcare providers.ConclusionsThe findings in this paper highlight the need to address the barriers to men’s involvement, engage men and women on issues of maternal health, and improve the healthcare systems – both in terms of facilities and attitudes of health staff - so that couples who wish to be together when accessing care can truly do so.

No abstract

How might an African based knowledge critically cast doubt upon globally hegemonic notions and traditions in understanding and theorizing men and masculinities? This essay examines this question through a critical reading of what it may mean to be ‘an emerging adult man’. The essay privileged a critical understanding of how poverty, poor crop yields, and climate volatility shape constructions of ‘emergent adulthood’. Drawing on interviews with men from northwestern Ghana, findings suggest that emerging adult men are committed to their cultural obligations as heteronormative breadwinners, yet ‘emergent adulthood’ is complicated by status insecurity, vulnerabilities, and powerlessness. To negotiate emergent adulthood, informants combine migrating to Techiman and joining ‘boys boys’ to achieve social respect and recognition. To understand the meanings of emergent adulthood, I argue for analytical sophistication on multiple issues and daily struggles that encapsulate rural life.

Women’s access to and control over productive resources, including land, has increasingly been recognized in global discussions as a key factor in reducing poverty, ensuring food security and promoting gender equality. Indeed, this argument has been widely accepted by both feminists and development theorists since the 1980s. Based on qualitative research with 50 purposively selected men and women, this study explored the complexity of women’s access to and control over land within a specific relationship of contestations, negotiations, and manipulations with men. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. While theoretically, participants showed that women’s [secure] access to and control over land has beneficial consequences to women themselves, households and the community at large, in principle, women's access and control status was premised in the traditional framework which largely deprives women, equal access and/or control over the land. The study indicates that even though land is the most revered resource and indeed, the dominant source of income for the rural poor, especially women, gender-erected discrimination and exclusion lie at the heart of many rural women in gaining access to land. This study argues that women's weak access rights and control over land continue to perpetuate the feminization of gender inequality–while men were reported to possess primary access and control over land as the heads of households, women were argued to have secondary rights due to their ‘stranger statuses’ in their husbands’ families. Overall, the degree of access to land among women was reported to be situated within two broad contexts–marriage and inheritance.