Rounding up Spinsters: Gender Chaos and Unmarried Women in Colonial Asante

Abstract

Between 1929 and 1932 in a number of villages and towns throughout rural Asante, chiefs were ordering the arrest of all women who were over the age of fifteen and not married. A woman was detained until she spoke the name of a man whom she would agree to marry and the man in question paid a release fee. If the man refused, he too was imprisoned or fined up to £5. If he agreed, he paid a small marriage fee to the woman's parents and one bottle of gin. Based on the correspondence of colonial officials, customary court records and the life histories and reminiscences of women who were among the spinsters caught, this article explores gender and social change in colonial Asante by dissecting and contextualizing the round-up of unmarried women. It seeks to understand this unusual episode in direct state intervention into the negotiating of marriage and non-marriage as part of the general chaos in gender relations that shook Asante in the years between the two World Wars. This chaos, often articulated in the language of moral crisis was, more than anything, about shifting power relationships. It was chaos engendered by cash and cocoa, by trade and transformation. From 1921 to 1935, with cocoa well-established in many parts of Asante, women's roles in the cash economy were changing and diversifying. Many wives were making the move from being the most common form of exploitable labour during the initial introduction of cocoa to themselves exploiting new openings for economic autonomy. That women were beginning to negotiate their own spaces within the colonial economy precipitated a profound crisis in conjugal obligations in Asante - a crisis requiring drastic measures. The rounding up of unmarried women was one of several weapons used by Asante's chiefs in the struggle to reassert control over women's productive and reproductive labour.

Gender in national history narratives in social studies textbooks for Ghana

“…Some scholars insist that in spite of systematic relegation of women to domestic spaces (Tsikata & Darkwah, 2013;Allman, 1996;Anhyidoho et al, 2016), they made substantial contribution to the social and economic constructs of Ghana (Anyidoho, et al, 2016); which ought not to be overlooked in history.…”

The Contribution of African Women to Economic Growth and Development: Historical Perspectives and Policy Implications Part I: The Pre-Colonial and Colonial Periods

“…In Asante in the 1920s and 1930s, many women opted to create their own cocoa farms instead of working for their husbands, the withdrawal of their labor precipitating a crisis in marriage that has been studied by Allman (1996). Others went to court to challenge the rules of matrilineal inheritance that excluded them from the benefits of their labor.…”

“…Similar arrangements were were rounded up by native authorities and brought before chiefs' tribunals. They were to be released if they agreed to marry, named a suitor, and paid a "release fee" (Allman 1996). This was a rather liberal application of the jurisdiction delegated to chiefs under the category of custom.…”

“…Leone through the Gold Coast, the Copperbelt and the Witwatersrand to deny women space in towns in the face of long-standing traditions of female industry and entrepreneurship (Little 1973;White 1987;Bradford 1992;Allman 1996;Parpart 2001). Longue durée studies of poverty (Iliffe 1987;Kalu 2006), violence and warfare (Reid 2007(Reid , 2010, disease (McNeil 1976;Packard 1989Packard , 2007Akyeampong 2006;Iliffe 2006) and other major themes have deepened our understanding of these phenomena in contemporary Africa.…”

Migration, family separation and caregiving across borders

“…This 'materiality of love', inherent to intergenerational relationships in Ghana (Coe, 2011b;Van der Geest, 2002), is characteristic of both mother-child and father-child dyads (Clark, 1999). As the head of the household, the father is expected to bear the bulk of the financial responsibilities, including feeding, clothing and school fees, independent of whether the child resides with the mother or the father (Allman, 1996;Boni, 2001). Given the importance of financial support, the father has always been an important figure in the child's upbringing, including in matrilineal societies:…”