Abstract

This paper discusses the null feminist wave in Ghana, a case-study for Sub-Saharan Africa. It shows the absence of the development of a coherent feminine ideology that is universal to all the nations, despite the disparate nature of feminism between African women. This appears as a huge gap in the literature on African Feminism. Through extensive literature review and analysis, it was found that the type of feminism that appears to be prevailing in Ghana and in Sub-Saharan Africa, is based on the enthusiastic appropriation of Western Feminine Theory. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the “feminist movement” has been spawn and promoted by institutional and bilateral entities to reduce gender discrimination, and give women access to male dominated economic opportunities. These developments have occurred with little or no significant contributions initiated solely by African women, and led by African women, due, perhaps, to the lack of knowledge-based transfer of feminist theory or identity. The author defines “African Feminism” and suggests the attributes of “African Feminine Identity” to guide this presentation, and perhaps, future research.

Keywords

African Feminism Theory, African Feminine Identity, CulturalMisappropriation, Western Feminist Theory, Social Movement, Null Feminist Wave

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1. Introduction

It is historically accepted that Western Feminism began with the intellectual output and advocacy of women like Hildegard Bingen (1098-1179); Christine de Pisan (1364-1430); Olympes de Gouge (1748-1793); Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797); Betty Friedan (1921-2006) and Gloria Steinem (1934-present). This led to the articulation of feminist principles (First through Third Waves) for the benefit of the greatest number of Western women, if not all women. The term “Feminism” emerged in 1837 from a French philosopher and socialist, Charles Fourier (1772-1837). This was to indicate the “illness of womanly qualities appearing in men” (Mohajan & Mohadhan, 2022: p. 1). That is to suggest that it was probably a pejorative and sardonic term of ridicule of men with feminine behavior which is not typical of male masculinity or, one who is described as effeminate. Interestingly, today, a feminist is one who behaves with apparently the ‘illness of manly qualities appearing in women’?

African Feminist Theory does not appear to exist in literature, despite the huge bibliography on feminism related publications in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. This is a huge gap in the literature and in knowledge, which is, perhaps, inexcusable. This is because academic institutions and universities in Africa have established costly directorates or centers for gender studies and have developed academic modules in the various sociology and psychology departments to teach “gender studies”, or combinations like “women, ethnicity and crime”, or “women ethnicity and politics”; “human development and family” and “Climate Change, women and development”. These examples leave the author to theorize that African Feminist Theory or African Feminine Identity Development model is yet to be articulated as a broad based philosophical, sociological, legal, and economic as well as psychological and rational basis for discussing matters affecting females in Sub-Saharan Africa. Many of the literature on African Feminism produced by African scholars or others writing about feminism in Africa have been engineered on the platform of Western Feminist thought and theory (Aidoo, 1977; Adamson et al., 1988; African Feminist Forum, 2006; McCaskie, 2017; Gillis et al., 2007; Adomako Ampofo, 2008; Tsikata, 2009; Oluwaseyi, 2015).

This behavior is common with many academic disciplines and areas of concern with Africa’s education and development, perhaps, out of intellectual laziness, or a general laissez faire attitude of both African intellectual men and women, who willfully allow encroachment into many walks of African life, including health care delivery, education, and even human sexuality and sexual orientation (Tilly, 2003; Davis, 2018; Long & O’Connel, 2022). This is characterized by the dependency of even African universities and academia on books and publications from Western universities which then allow the external powers and entities to interfere with the internal development of the respective nations. Either out of peer jealousies; institutional and administrative corruption, the typical African university boards with their vice chancellors do not make budgetary allocations to support faculty publications and book development, but interestingly, there is often money to buy sports utility vehicles for such personalities’ usage fueled by the affected universities coffers (Dolan et al., 2023; Sibani, 2018).

The author will discuss the evolutionary path taken by the Feminine Identity Development Theory of the Western Feminist movement with inspiration from Black Identity Development theoretical and empirical approaches initiated in the United States in the 1970s. The author would opportunistically first look at the work of William E. Cross, then those of Nancy E. Downing & Kristin L. Roush’s “Feminine Identity Development,” theory (1985) and Sara Daleney McDougall’s “Feminist Identity” theory, (2012). The underlying question is, if Western researchers and scholars could be inspired by Cross’s Black Identity Development Theory; to develop their own unique theories for Feminism irrespective of the shortcomings of these theories, why didn’t it provide the theoretical impulse to the African women’s or feminist movement in Sub-Saharan Africa? Is it because African Feminism is the same as Western feminism? If it is not the same, what are the attributes of African Feminism? What reasons can be adduced for the disconnect between African-American philosophical explanation of racism, discrimination and hate as experienced in the United States by Black women, for example, vis-à-vis the patriarchal discrimination and economic exclusion as well as hate that African women experience in Sub-Saharan Africa? (Arkorful & Agyemang, 2014). It has been alleged that “American popular culture inhibits a close relationship between African-Americans and the African Continent” (Amaize, 2021, para 1). How true is this allegation and could it have been the reason why Cross’s Black Identity Theory failed to inspire the African Feminists in Sub-Saharan Africa? The vexing question is whether the very absence of African Feminist Theory from the copious literature on feminism in general; provides the exculpatory evidence that, there never was an African Feminist movement to begin with, let alone a cohort of leaders of such a movement to have taken the time to define what “feminism” ought to mean to the African women and the girl child; and to develop African Feminist Identity and or African Feminist Theory? The answer to these inquiries would become self-evident, perhaps, as this paper progresses.

2. Defining Western Feminism

Feminism has many facets such as liberal, conservative and radical feminism, none of which one could honestly say, African Feminist Identity fits into one or the other (Wuest, 1995; Hooks, 2000; Oluwaseyi, 2015; Wuest et al., 2002; Mohajan & Mohadhan, 2022). Hooks (2000) reported that liberal feminism sees “equality of men and women through political and legal reforms”. The issues that are implicated in liberal feminism are no different from the conventional pre-occupations of the needs of both liberal and conservative supporters alike. The interrogation of social conflicts between males and females, the appraisal of the differential gender rights and privileges of women and men in Sub-Saharan Africa or even Ghana, vis-à-vis the adjudication of human rights within the lenses of continental and international politics and advocacy are issues that are still waiting to be addressed, preferably by women researchers, political and community leaders (Hooks, 2000: pp. 312-313; Jackson & Cothran, 2003). Conservative feminism however, in the case of Ghana, is typified by the recent Ghanaian Family Values Bill passed by Parliament in February of 2024, but waiting for Presidential assent to become law. It seeks to rationalize the conduct of Ghanaians in their expression of sex, selection of sexual orientation and even partners. Radical feminism calls for the ordering and reinvention of society based on the same values of equality without patriarchal controls of society by men or women who behave and think like men. It aims to eliminate sexism, heterosexism but promotes subjectivism in sexual orientation and lifestyle in society. Feminism Grounded Theory allows for the coding, development of feminist concepts, categorization of concepts leading to the formation of theory, taking into consideration, culture, regional unique characteristics, and power dynamics (Mohajan & Mohadhan, 2022: p. 1; Glaser & Strauss, 1967). That is to say, the likelihood of running into a variety of approaches to feminism was theoretically and empirically high. Whereas the First Wave of Feminism provided the historical information of the emergence of the phenomenon, the Second Wave of Feminism advocated for the propagation of splinter groups, a process of decentralization of feminism whose aim was to empower women using techniques of sharing, and contesting articulated in “The BITCH Manifesto” (Freeman, 1972; Antic & Radacic, 2020). Despite the desire to decentralize feminist concept and way of life, despite the demographical differences “such as gender, culture, class, ability, age, sexual orientation” and superstitions on male-female dynamics, feminism was seen from different lenses depending on location and setting (Wuest, 1995; Kaur & Nagaich, 2019; Mohajan & Mohadhan, 2022: p. 2). This statement does not exclude common themes experienced by women or victims of gender inequality and outright abuses of their human rights. Feminism is a social movement and ideologies seeking to establish and defend equal political, economic, social, cultural and legal rights for all women within a given geographical location, class and social status (Hooks, 2000). That is to say, American feminists speak to the needs of American women, at least initially, with particular focus on White women. Racist White women’s view of feminism did not cover African-American women. In the same women epistemological observations of feminism in Ghana, Nigeria or, on the broader Sub-Saharan African zone of the world, feminists’ speech tends to focus on urban, educated and formally employed women with, perhaps, very little regard to the traditional rural women in the villages or those living on the margin of cosmopolitan cities like Accra, Kumasi and Cape Coast in Ghana. It has been observed, though not empirically, that in the homes of African professional women, whiles their daughters go to private and public schools for education, there is often a house girl who toils for such a family in the house of such women, some may self-describe as ‘African feminists’. Although on the global scale, feminism has pushed for equal opportunities for women in education and employment, this is seen more vividly in the output of international and multilateral institutions like the United Nations, European Union, and individual national agendas to push feminism as part of their international diplomacy and politics (Jain, 2020; Jackson & Cothran, 2003). In Sub-Saharan Africa, majority of the women are relegated and confined to the domestic arena and just as it was in medieval Europe, where women were deprived of their participation in public life (Parry et al., 2015; Cole & Symes, 2020). Some of the nations in Sub-Saharan Africa have taken steps to rationalize the power distribution between men and women through legislation and public policy to protect women’s access and rights over their own properties, spousal and communal asset distribution, participation in politics, and affirmative action and quotas to ensure women’s participation in national development (Malinowska, 2020). Despite such progressive measures for equality of men and women, there are still large COHORT of young women with no education, no marketable skills, and who RESORT to brokering their bodies in the streets and in the dark, for pittance in order to put body and soul together.

3. Developing a Working Definition of African Feminism for This Paper

As a working definition of African feminism, this author defines it:

As not merely the demand for equality with men, or to again access to seats in the board room, but women must have the will to shatter all glass ceilings, bulldoze all glass walls, to instill into our collective consciousness, the concept of autonomy, choice, and freedom from fear of one another:—in order to have the agency to promote and empower women; sustain and respect the contributions of women towards the development of society; irrespective of social, cultural; political and economic status; and to give weight and attention to women not for the promotion of sexual promiscuity and deviance, or the emasculation of men, but to universalize human rights; the right to fairness; the rule of law and equitable participation in every aspect of society.

The key attributes of this working definition are the demand for commitment from self-described women as feminists, with lived experiences as feminists, and other feminists supporters and sympathizers to persistently demand social transformation; equitable distribution of social assets; and with deep respect to the concept of autonomy; choice; and free-will, which incidentally include sexual preferences and sexual orientation as well as the implementation of human rights principles on the streets, in academia, board rooms, military barracks, through legislation, court houses and legal adjudication, the rule of law and through any other means feasible.

4. Procedural Approach to Literature Search and Content Analysis

In this paper, the author has taken a particular view as to why African Feminism and African Feminine Identity Theory have yet not been developed and makes the attempt to provide the definition for African Feminism and African Feminine Identity Theory for the current developing democracies in Sub-Saharan Africa. The author employed desk top literature review and content analysis of the literature subjectively selected to be part of the body of knowledge for this review, relying mostly on literature that fall into the category of being locus classicus on the themes those authors addressed, using the snow-ball approach and mining the reference lists of those publications. Key terms and phrases that were used to identify literature on the topic conveniently were: “Definition of African Feminist Identity”; “Definition of African Feminist Theory”; “What is Feminism in Africa?” “What is Feminism in Ghana?” “Do African Feminists see themselves in the plane as Western Feminists?” “What is the legal protection for feminism in Sub-Saharan Africa?” “Does Western Feminism values define African Feminism?” “Why does African Feminists engage in co-option of historical female figures into modern day feminist cohorts?” “Which group has contributed the greatest value to women empowerment: Politicians or women?” The data was culled from journals, books, and other grey literature sources and purposively selected from the huge cache of publications on the topic, selecting those papers that addressed the African or Ghanaian situation. The data was briefed and analyzed based on the author’s skills, training and experiences working on policy, law and national security concerns.

5. Outcome of the Investigations

1) Rationalizing the Lack of Development for African Feminist Theory or Identity

The research revealed that, just as the broader Sub-Saharan African nations lack a systematic compilation of the myriad of moral philosophies of the respective African nations, or even those of the individual nations, the same lack of the intellectual will to articulate the philosophical basis for African Feminist Identity or theory, is repeated in feminism studies and discourse in Sub-Saharan Africa, perhaps, with the exception of South Africa which shows a greater sense of maturity and acceptance of actual feminists and even feminists who happen to be other gender orientations (Norman, 2023a, 2023b, 2023c). The tendency of the various feminist groups in Africa is to copy verbatim from Western Feminist Theory. This study is not proposing intellectual isolation when it comes to the development of the core issues in African feminism, or the opportunity to learn from other progressive sources, such as the United States, UK and Europe, but there is an observed reality of intellectual pushback of feminist thought development since the Fourth World Conference of Women in 1995 in Beijing, China (Antic & Radacic 2020). What is being proposed here is that, African women, African feminists, intellectual or not, should develop the knowledge-based for African feminism thought, presented in a systematic way for pedagogy, self-actualization of women and for review.

Perhaps, when one looks at the backgrounds and skills of some of the Western historical feminist luminaries that society has come to admire, collectively they shine a spotlight on, perhaps, why Africa does not boast of such personalities: Hildegard Bingen (1098-1179); Christine de Pisan (1364-1430); Olympes de Gouge (1748-1793); Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797); Betty Friedan (1921-2006); Gloria Steinem (1934-present) and Marilyn Loden (1946-2022).

Take the case of Betty Friedan, the author of The Feminist Mystique, (1966) a feminist icon and founder of the National Organization for Women, was college educated, probably from the middle to upper-middle class family. Her father was a successful jewelry business owner and a socially astute mother both of whom were supportive of her intellectual activities. Betty Friedan was a holder of post graduate degree in journalism, a mother of three and an active member of the Workers Union, which led her to campaign for; among other causes; racial equality and women’s rights (Parry, 2010: pp. 1584-1589). As exemplified by Friedan’s case, feminist theory or movement was not initially articulated or proposed by uneducated or marginally exposed females with limited world view and self-immolating cultural appraisal of the status of women vis-à-vis those of men in the respective nations (Mohajan & Mohadhan, 2022; Parry, 2010; Glaser & Strauss, 1967).

In trying to identify the historic African women feminist, a lot of improvident claims have been made by various feminist groups, researchers and scholars, particularly in Africa (Kasseye Bayu, 2019: p. 54). Sara Motta, Cristina Flesher Fominaya, Catherine Eschler, Laurance Cox, (2011, pp. 1-2), postulated that “(…) feminism seems to be in crisis”. These scholars felt that “prominent sectors of the feminist movement have become institutionalized, and professionalized, including academia (…)” raising “questions about how well they can defend women from neoliberalism and about their role in the struggle for post-neoliberal, post-patriarchal world”.

Some of the African women personalities that have been co-opted into the feminist landscape might not agree with being labeled as feminist if they were alive, due to the perception that feminism is akin to other gender orientations in women, particularly in nations like Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Gambia, and even Kenya. Having said that, even if one conscripts a person like Mariama Ba, (circa, 1929-1981), the author of “So Long a Letter” (1989), by compulsion into African feminism, that might be a bit of a stretch, although her effort was not an ordinary one. For Mariama Ba to address the life of women in Senegal during the 1970s, discuss issues of family and community life, issues of Islamic religion and polygamy, death and rituals were no ordinary feats because she stood the possibility of her work being considered as “haram”. Mariama Ba’s work was more about the quest for personal autonomy or sovereignty and choice as opposed to the expectations and imposition of the will of modern feminists on other women. Illustrative as her piece was and continue to engage the attention of researchers, “So Long a Letter” is more descriptive of what happens in some African societies when it comes to the issue of marriage rather than being about feminism or advocacy per se.

It appears Mariama Ba’s book falls victim to Kathleen Peters, Dielma Jackson & Trudy Rudge’s (2008) search for utility and value of feminist research approach in their paper, “Research on Couples: are feminist approaches useful?” Peters et al. (2008) felt the utilitarian value of feminist research depended on individual preferences and did not apply to all since, in most cases, the views captured in those researches were only those of women without regard to the views of the men involved in a given narrative. In this sense, no matter the influence of Mariama Ba’s book, both Christian and Muslim women in Senegal continue to engage in polygamous marriages, perhaps, as expressions of their choice and autonomy and not as an anti-feminist ideology in the general and cultural scheme of Senegalese life.

Another case to consider is the narrative of a brave Ghanaian Queen mother of Ejisu, in the Ashanti Region, called Yaa Asantewaa (1840-1921). Yaa Asantewaa fought in the War of the Golden Stool, a symbol of power and legitimacy of the Ashanti Empire; as it then was; and to protest the presence of the British soldiers on Ashanti land. The British lulled the Ashanti Chief into a meeting, then captured and exiled the Chief, Prempeh I and his courtier into the Seychelles Islands with the intention of ceasing the Golden Stool (Boahen, 1977: pp. 93-106; McCaskie, 2017). It was the Queen mother of Ejisu, a king making stool in the Ashanti Empire, that resisted the British, more as a leader, a mother, a patriot and role model, but not as a feminist. Eventually, she lost the war, because the British colonial powers were able to annex the Ashanti Empire into the Confederate states of the coastal and northern confederacies and laid the foundation for the creation of the then Gold Coast, now Ghana in 1920 (Boahen, 1977). Due to the extraordinary move by the Queen mother Yaa Asantewaa to go to war with the British, an unheard-of action by a Ghanaian or West African woman, some modern writers on feminism in Ghana and in hindsight attempt to co-opt Yaa Asantewaa as a feminist. This is an outlandish feminist curlicue of a claim, which is totally incongruous to the generality of Ashanti historicity, culture, and social controls.

Feminism as a movement has been propelled by subaltern female intellectuals and cosmopolitan socialites that desired to give full faith and credit to the concept of equality of the sexes before the law and the adjudication of the rule of law (Malinowska, 2020). Due to the intersectional nature of the mixture of issues and needs implicated in theorizing feminism in Africa burdened by multiplicity of cultural ethos, the process could be more complicated for the African intellectual as compared to the more heterogeneous racial and cultural milieu of, for example, the United States, Canada, UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Perhaps, such outlandish claims led Motta et al. (2011) to call for “(…) an urgent need to revisit and reinvent feminist theorizing and practice in ways that combine critical understanding of the past with current struggles, and that create theories both inside and outside the academy to support movement praxis” (ibid, p. 2). That is to say, a new feminist theory that emphasizes practice and performance rather than theory which emanates from nothing (Freeman, 1972; Gitlin, 1993).

The apparent oversight by both African intellectual female and male researches on feminism has bothered a few African scholars such as Oyekan Adeolu Oluwaseyi. In his paper, African Feminism: Some Critical Considerations, Oluwaseyi (2015) raised serious issues about the wholesale placement of African women in the same theoretical feminist domain as Western women, with the inherent advantages of Western women they obtain from their economic ecosystem. He advised that such writers and researchers should “consider the plight of the bulk of the African women (…) from a uniquely African viewpoint in order to adequately mirror the reality of the African woman” (Oluwaseyi, 2015: pp. 1-2). The White women liberation movement is about middleclass power struggle for female influence in their counterpart White male world. “if the White women groups do not realize that they are in fact, fighting capitalism and racism, we do not have common bonds. If they do not realize that the reason for their condition lie in a debilitating economic and social system, and not simply that men get a vicarious pleasure out of consuming their bodies for exploitative reasons (…) then we cannot unite with them around common grievances or even discuss these groups in a serious manner, because they are completely irrelevant to black women in particular or to the black struggle in general” (Beal, 1969). These recall into context the statement by the Combahee River Collective (1978) “that Black women are inherently valuable, that Black women’s liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to” (perhaps, White women’s) or “somebody else’s but because of our need as human persons for autonomy”. There were other statements by other groups such as the Third World Women Alliance (TWWA), a revolutionary socialist organization that operated in the United States from 1968 through the 1980s (Romney, 2021; Schiller, 2000). In the 1970, TWWA published the Black Women’s Manifesto, which presented argument for specifying oppression against Black women. The Manifesto was opposed to racism and capitalism because the “Black woman was demanding a new set of female definitions and a recognition of herself of a citizen, companion and confidant, not a matriarchical villain or a step stool baby-maker…” (The Black Woman’s Manifesto, 1970).

But whereas the feminist movement in the Western world had the basics tools for appreciating and appraising what feminism is or ought to be with the feminist identity models, upon which a manifesto can be raised or be based, interestingly, women in Ghana also developed their own manifesto, but based on no philosophical, theoretical or empirical matrix or metric. No credit was given to any other source as if the Ghanaian Women manifesto emerged, with all due respect, like the Golden Stool of the Ashanti empire, out of the heavens. “The Women’s Manifesto for Ghana” (2004) in conjunction with the Network for Women’s Rights, listed typical conventional development values or themes as its aims. Frankly, there is deep resemblance of the themes articulated in The Black Women’s Manifesto of 1970 with The Ghanaian Women’s Manifesto of 2004 as shown in the Table 1 below. Each of these groups was concerned with the position of women within the respective societies and how best to ameliorate the handicaps the women faced by listing those handicaps systematically. Whereas the Black Women’s Manifesto of 1970 took a broader view of society and sought to address inequities within the work place not only for women but for all, it also addressed affirmative action for all not just for women as the case is in Ghana at

Table 1. Comparison between two women’s manifestos.

Norman’s comparative Women’s Manifestos of 1970 and 2004.

this epochal moment. They expanded their advocacy to encompass labor unions, international human rights and general welfare rights for all. The Ghana Women Manifesto was or is women-centric and sees the society as, perhaps, existing for the promotion of benefits for just women.

Going back to the similarities between the Black Women’s Manifesto of 1970 and the Ghanaian Women’s Manifesto of 2004, this author is not suggesting plagiarized text in the newer manifesto, because that would be a serious academic burden to handle. Although there appears to be the thinking that, in legal drafting, copying legislation or policy from another source is not a serious academic offense, even if there is no attribution or citation to the original source, there is the need to ascertain whether that material has been copyrighted by another or the printer. That is to emphasize that the Black Women’s Manifesto belongs to the organization that created it and therefore, any use of a part or whole sections of that document ought to be cited and credit given to where credit is due. For example, the legislation of another nation is a public document and since it is in the public domain, it may be used without ascription, but if the printer such as in the case of Ghana, (Ghana Publishing Company Limited (Assembly Press) has copyrighted the document, then it moves out of the “fair use” public domain sphere needing no citation, perhaps, into private domain that requires quotation (Bucker & Cooper, 2023). The problem with that thinking is that, the Ghanaian Women’s Manifesto was not a national legal instrument since it cannot be said to represent the entire population of women and men in Ghana, but a private social policy of a small group of women and their aspirations.

The values articulated by the document covered more or less the themes in The Black Woman’s Manifesto, although not verbatim in many instances. Yet it would have been nice to, at least, make an honorable mention and a good show of “sisterhood” of the influence of that manifesto on the Ghanaian Women’s Manifesto. These themes included the values listed in Table 1. The Manifesto set out to “provide a platform of a common set of demands for the achievement of gender equality and equity and sustainable national development”. It allows “women to articulate their concerns in the 2004 Elections and beyond. Women are thereby empowered to use their votes as a bargaining tool and recruit others to do the same.” Good intentioned as the Ghanaian Women’s Manifesto was, its apparent achievements are more on paper and as a historical footnote in the current affairs of the nation Ghana, but in terms of real achievements, it is difficult to measure. Among some of the achievements of the Ghanaian Women’s Manifesto is the claim of contributing to the promulgation of the Domestic Violence Bill which was later passed into law as the Domestic Violence Act of 2007 (Act 732), and a few structural legal developments that would have happened with or without the contribution from women’s groups, since this kind of effort is a collective one between affected government ministries, law makers, civil society organizations and international non-governmental organizations as well as local entities, lobbyists and faith-based organizations. The weakest part of the manifesto and also difficult to sustain is the claim of “allowing women to articulate their concerns in the 2004 elections and beyond”, and that women are thereby empowered to use their votes as bargaining tool (…) (Women’s Manifesto for Ghana, 2004: pp. 4-6).

As a general matter, the value of the exercise of democracy in Ghana and similar nations in Sub-Saharan Africa under republican constitutions such as those of Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda, is degraded with blatant and open vote-buying; gift giving and inducement; voter intimidation; incumbent abuse of national assets to support campaigns; infusion of financial contributions from sources whose funds may be tainted with criminal activities: such deeds deny every voter, and not just women the opportunity to leverage their votes (Tilly, 2003; Bogaards, 2009; Batory, 2016; Anaxagorou et al., 2020; Norman, 2024: p. 2). In their just ended November 2^nd 2023 elections of Parliamentary Candidates in their so-called “orphan constituencies” a delegate in the Ashanti Region was captured on camera saying, the voting in that constituency had not started because they were waiting for their payment before casting their vote and ended with the slogan, “No money, no Vote”. This event occurred in Ejura Sekyere-Odumasi in the Ashanti Region. This goes in support of Lynge’s 2023 assertion that elections in Ghana is like (…) harvesting season, when it comes to reaping the fruits from the parliamentary tree (Lynge, 2023: p. 148; Lindberg, 2003: p.127). Other NPP delegate, and perhaps, party officials were seen on camera sharing money to and among delegates with glee. By orphan constituency is meant those constituencies where the New Patriotic Party has no parliamentary representation (Norman, 2024: pp. 2-4).

The validity of the Ghanaian Women’s Manifesto appears to have been short-lived since the plight of women across board in Ghana has been more distressed than men since its promulgation, partly due to the adjunct nature of Ghana’s women’s movements and the so-called African feminist movement. The Manifesto does not have self-rejuvenating or self-renewal mechanism to infuse emerging feminist the intellectual platform on which to work. It does not make provision for fund-raising mechanism, which makes its goals mere abstractions and subject to the political interests of politicians. Its lofty goals may be shelved until Ghanaian feminism develops the tools for radicalism and true feminists to fight for social transformation? As of 2024, the total unemployed population of Ghana from 2010 to 2024 by gender was estimated by the Ghana Statistical Service, a key government agency, at around 295,500 males, but the rate for females was approximately 297,000 (Ghana Statistical Service, 2024 Unemployment Report). While the figures appear to be inadequate for the 14-year duration in terms of real unemployment, it still provides a picture of where the nation’s workforce are situated.

2) Black Identity Development Theory

William E. Cross Jr. developed the “Black Identity Development” (1971) theory for the discussion of matters of race in the United States of America, the values of which are delineated in Table 2. Cross’s theory showed that Black people begin their lives being less aware about their identities of being black in America was the main reason why they suffer discrimination. That is to say, “the (…) color of their skin” defined them more than (…) “the content of their character” (Martin Luther King, 1963; para 1 and 2). However, gradually, according to Cross, they move to a place in time when they begin to internalize their narrative and experiences in White society resulting a desired arousal of awareness or self-knowledge of being Black, and may lead to perhaps, advocacy, community work and even resistance for social change. Cross subsequently revised his Black Identity theory which he labeled as “Nigrescence Identity Model” (1991) (Vandiver et al., 2001). Black Identity Development theory helped to strengthen the

Table 2. List and explain cross’s black consciousness values.

Norman’s Table 2: List and explain cross’s black consciousness values.

intellectual prowess and knowledge of civil rights activists, community workers, law makers and the general public, including researchers and intellectuals on thinking about race matters, by “providing theoretical and empirical but multidimensional measure, with the Cross Racial Identity Scale” (ibid, Vandiver et al., 2000). Cross had proposed that for the average African-American to become conscious of his Black Identity, the following attributes ought to be present:

To Cross, the first stage of self-awareness of a black person is when he or she recognizes his or color as playing a defining role in his or her humanity. To illustrate this point with a Black man from say Ghana with another Black man from Chicago, shows that the Ghanaian Black man does not easily take offense for being called the “N” word because within the Ghanaian Black man’s narrative, the word nigger has zero emotions attached to it, whereas the same cannot be said about the Chicago Black man who was born and raised in Chicago and has come to attach not just negative connotation to the “N” word but also historical and real experiences to it. Cross is saying that the first time that the African-American comes to realize his blackness through an “encounter”, his world view may change into either accepting who he truly is, or something else.

3) Feminine Identity Development

Other examples, adaptations of Cross’s theory, are Nancy E. Downing & Kristin L. Roush’s “Feminine Identity Development,” (1985) and Sara Daleney McDougall’s “Feminist Identity”, (2012), in which they presented a feminist consciousness development model which was inspired by William E. Cross Jr’s “Theory of Black Identity Development” (1971). Downing & Roush’s Feminist Identity exposition in 1985 is a frequently cited paper by other researchers and scholars. The stages for the processes leading to the development of feminist identity were similar to that of Cross’s as shown in the Table 3 below.

In Cross’s original model, he begun with the “Pre-encounter” phase of a Black person’s experiences with racism, rejection, social exclusion and discrimination. The “Pre-encounter” phase does not suggest a moment in time when everything is honky-dory for the Black person in America, but a period where because of limited self-awareness, the hypothetical Black individual may not consider his experiences with job discrimination as being caused by the color of his or her skin and not merely due to his or her lack of skills-set for that particular task.

Downing & Roush jumped the “Pre-encounter” phase of Cross’s model to “Passive Acceptance” phase of being a woman, perhaps, with the assumption that women already knew their status in the societies in which they found themselves, and therefore did not appraise women’s consciousness from a point in time picked out of the veil of ignorance or innocence (Rawls, 1971). “From passive acceptance” the hypothetical women in Downing & Roush model landed in plane of “revelation” in the feminist plateau, where, perhaps, the true nature of their status was made self-evident to them. McDougall (2012: p. 6) succinctly described the process by which women moved from the denial of repercussions of sexism toward an awareness and commitment to ending oppression, but this

Table 3. List and explain downing & Roush’s feminine identity values.

Norman’s Table 3: List and explain downing & Roush’s feminine identity values.

is not the case. That is to say, the consciousness of the women in Downing & Roush’s hypothesis erupted from being women the passive acceptance of ills of society, perhaps, out of hopelessness and resignation. Although not clearly stated by the critics of Downing & Roush’s Feminist Identity model, they collectively appear to suggest that women’s consciousness goes through the same cognitive development from the “encounter” phase much in the same way that Black consciousness does (Yakushko, 2007; Shibley-Hyde, 2002; Ng et al., 1995, Gitlin, 1993; Baber & Allen, 1992; Alcoff, 1988; Freeman, 1972). If not; then, how did women in Downing & Roush’s model after “Passive acceptance” of the inequities and discriminatory practices of society for so long, reach “revelation” and subsequently the ability to internalize or experience the “embeddedness” of their new experiences and to further “synthesis” the lessons from those experiences?

It appears the Downing & Roush’s model key elements are a bit repetitive because “embedding” a concept is synonymous with “synthesizing” or “internalizing” it which may or not lead to internal propulsion like a catalytic device to motivate one to action or to “active commitment” to feminism or feminist causes. The simplest view of Downing & Roush’s model is premised on the notion that women in contemporary society must first acknowledge their struggles, then repeatedly work through their feelings about the prejudices and discrimination they experience in order to achieve an authentic and positive feminist identity (ibid).

4) Sarah Daleney McDougall’s Feminist Identity Development Model (2012)

McDougall’s “Feminist Identity” (2012), in which she presented a feminist consciousness development model was also, perhaps, inspired by William E. Cross Jr’s “Theory of Black Identity Development” (1971). McDougall tackled how women define feminism into six categories suggesting a subjective hypothesis. The issue of “subject woman is one that has come to the fore with the growing theoretical influence of post-structuralism” (Motta et al., 2011: p. 12). Individual subjectivity “rejects gender as a fixed category” in favor of binaries and dualism and that “… origin stories are futile and counterproductive, since an essentialist understanding of male and female lies at the heart of the debate”. That, “… post-structuralists share with working class black and socialist feminists … of the need to replace unitary notions of womanhood and female gender identity with pluralistic and complex conceptions of gender … to be mediated through race, class, age, sexuality, history, social and political and economic contexts” (Motta et al., 2011: p. 12). McDougall theorized that there was the existence of subjective feminism of each woman in any given community and offered that the definition of feminism was categorized into six different dimensions as listed in Table 4. Subjective Feminism proponents include Alcoff (1988); Frieze & McHugh (1998); Krokokke & Sorensen, (2006).

Subjective feminism is part of the underlying philosophy of the Third Wave. Although some authors have alluded to the fact that the key difference between Western and African Feminist Theory, is the “conceptualization of women as the subject of struggle” (Kasseye Bayu, 2019: pp. 54-55). This assertion has been made by the African Feminist Forum in the Charter of Feminist Principles for African Feminist by stating that, “… The Charter recognized (…) African women as the subject not objects of feminists work…” (Krokokke & Sorensen, 2006: pp. 10-11). If women are not the objects, (referent objects) of feminism, then what is the feminist struggle all about? Feminist identity aims to protect, defend, promote and serve the needs of women, meaning women are the objects that are threatened by patriarchal society. Even so, the importation of realism into the conceptualization of feminist philosophy appears to be going far away from whether or not women are the referent objects of feminism as an end unto itself. Women alone cannot be the referent object of society without the inclusion of men. Therefore, it appears feminist claim that “women are the subjects of their deeds” is one-dimensional if not anarchical, unless it is also assumed that the feminist liberation movement advocates for a separate but equal societal set-up, where women are on one side and the males are on another side?

That is to say, each woman holds a unique feminist narrative which was or is bigger than the feminist movement, which she claimed provided insight into the centrality of equality to understanding feminist identity and awareness. But such an argument cannot be sustained in that understanding a feminist in say, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; does not automatically allow one to understand a feminist in McCarthy Hills, Accra, irrespective of the fact that both may have belong to the same demographic cohort by age, education, social status and exposure due to differences in cognitive and intrinsic needs of each of these two women in this example.

Table 4. List and explain mcdougall’s feminine identity values.

Norman’s Table 4: List and explain McDougall’s feminine identity values.

She offered that the result of her study was to challenge the leading model of feminist identity in the literature (McDougall, 2012, p. iii). By this McDougall meant that to understand the Feminist Movement, one needed to understand the subjective needs of each and every woman within that group the movement was meant to protect. McDougall did not call for the aggregation of the needs of the collective but left her support for a polarized individual needs approach. This position presents a tedious task for trying to explain the six categories of feminist identity in her Feminine Identity model, because one has to address the needs of women as a subjective exercise. If one takes the issue of “Working towards Justice” different people experience justice, the adjudication of the rule of law and satisfaction with the law or judiciary differently. The challenge thrown by McDougall’s individualized feminism as if we live in a utopian world, filled with anarchistic feminists, as if there was never the Second and Third Waves of feminism development which advocated for similar decentralizing approaches to feminism, creates the confusion which Motta et al. (2011) complained about. Granted, each woman is different from the other, but as human beings, there are certain normative values and expectations of a given human society that can be aggregated and not divided into bits and pieces for the good of the community. Among the findings of McDougall’s research is the claim that the findings did not reflect the five stages of feminine identity development model proposed by Downing & Roush (1985). That the respondents in her qualitative work in 2012 reported that their consciousness about sexism in their respective communities did not happen in a single moment. They always knew of the gender inequalities and injustices that existed between men and women. To provide this outcome as a challenge to Downing & Roush (1985) feminist model is to also attack William E. Cross Jr’s (1971) Black Identity model, both of which denies the awareness of either the victims of sexism or racism until an epiphany occurred to awaken their consciousness, and thus creating the sudden insight into the meaning of being woman or black person in capitalist, racist, sexist, and patriarchal society (McDougall, 2012: p. 69).

6. List and Explain the Ghanaian Feminine Identity Values, 2004

It appears the attributes of the Ghanaian Feminine Identity Values as a stand-in for African feminine identity are contained in the themes of the Ghanaian Women’s Manifesto. Those themes are not about the autonomy, choice, freedom, individual capabilities and functioning but more about political aspirations. Involvement in politics is not a panacea for women’s liberation, because if it were so, there would not be a single male that may be considered as marginalized, or even disenfranchised by the political system. Politics is not the answer to neopatrimonialism (where incumbent politicians use State resources to secure the loyalty of voters in the general or a section of the population) and identity politics, but a huge contributor to the status of women and men in corrupt societies of Sub-Saharan Africa. It is therefore troubling to base the themes of the Ghanaian Women’s Manifesto on the political system when life in Sub-Saharan Africa like life of everyone irrespective of sex, is not dependent on politics but the communities’ commercial and social perambulations as they pursue their aspirations and individual goals (Table 5).

7. The Charter of Feminist Principles for African Feminists

The African Feminist Forum, (AFF) together with the African Women’s Development Forum (AWDF) put together the “Feminist Charter” in 2006 at a forum in Accra, Ghana. There were broad brush strokes of expectations and aspirations articulated by the AFF/AWDF confab which were all meant to promote feminism, women’s rights and equal opportunity as well as equality with men.

Table 5. List and explain ghanaian women’s feminine identity values.

Norman’s Table: List and explain Ghanaian women’s feminine identity values.

Although there were representatives at the Forum from Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda and other African nations, not much was heard as voices of discontent from its members against the promulgation and passage in the parliaments of Uganda and Ghana’s proposed draconian law prohibiting lesbian and homosexual lifestyles as not only acts of deviancies but criminal.

The object of the family values law of Ghana is “to provide for proper human sexual rights and Ghanaian family values; proscribe LGBTQ+ and related activities; proscribe propaganda of, advocacy for, or promotion of LGBETQQIAAP+ and related activities, provide for the protection of and support for children, persons who are victims or accused of LGBTTQQIAAP+ and related activities and other persons; and related matters” (Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, 2021, p. i).

What is interesting to note about the Feminist Charter of 2006 is that, in the Preamble, the members of the Forum “defined and named themselves publicly as Feminists because (they wanted to) celebrate (their) feminists’ identities and politics” (ibid, p. 4). Having made such a bold declaration, one expected that their members should have been equally bold, equally uncompromising to provide the voices of discontent and carried out acts of civil disobedience and non-violent action as announced under “Individual Ethics, 3-7” of the Charter. Apart from this observation, the Feminist Charter of 2006 also contains flamboyant claims unsupported by evidence-based research. In the Charter, the members of the Forum concluded that,

(…) the historical and significant gains that have been made by the African Women’s Movement over the past forty years, (…) happened because African Feminist led the way, from the grassroots level and up; they strategized, organized, networked, went on strike, and marched in protest, and did the research, analyses, lobbying, institution building and all that it took for States, employers and institutions to acknowledge women’s personhood (Krokokke & Sorensen, 2006: p. 8).

This claim appears to be incongruent with the historicity of social transformation in Africa in the last forty years, if not outright dishonest and self-serving statements of achievements that are simply not seen, or developments in the lives of women that are definitely hifalutin feminist’s claim. If women in Africa have made any positive gains in the emancipation of women, it is hugely attributable to central government, bilateral and multilateral institutional support, prompt and direction as well as financial support.

8. Discussions and Conclusions

The implications from the various points and issues raised about the need to articulate a clear pathway for African Feminine Identity and Feminist Theory, calls on researchers to take a critical look at what feminism is, how it is operationalized, who operationalizes it, and why? It also requires the proper labeling and systematic periodic review of the progress of society towards feminism, or the feminization of the mundane routines of society. Society needs to agree on how the expected emancipation of women from patriarchal controls and patrimonialism can be measured through mechanisms such as the Human Development Index, or any nationally accepted indexes. This paper is meant to get the ball rolling again on the apparently stalled scholastic and popular discourse on human rights as they pertain to women in general but not as to feminism in particular due to subjectivism of feminism (Freeman, 1972; Gitlin, 1993; Baber & Allen, 1992; Alcoff, 1988; Frieze & McHugh, 1998).

The discussion would claw back to Oyekan’s African Feminism: Some Critical Considerations, (2015) research report. Despite calling for focus on African women specific needs, Oyekan got into a bit of confusion when Oyekan later called for “integration and synergy” between Western Theory of Feminism and African Feminist Theory, “in a way that recognized peculiar situations,” because of the fear of “potential damage inherent in separate intellectual approaches” to feminism (Oluwaseyi, 2015: p. 2). Perhaps, more attention should have been paid to the literature with respects to the content and goals of the various Waves of Feminism, particularly the Second Wave that promoted differential approaches to feminism based on social class, education, race and culture. As already reported, the Second and Third Waves of Feminism supported subjective feminism as exemplified by the research of leading researchers in feminism (Freeman, 1972; Gitlin, 1993; Baber & Allen, 1992; Alcoff, 1988; Frieze & McHugh, 1998; Krokokke & Sorensen, 2006; Motta et al., 2011).

Attention should also have been paid by African researchers of Feminism Grounded Theory. Feminism Grounded Theory allows for the coding, development of feminist concepts, categorization of concepts leading to the formation of theory, taking into consideration, culture, regional unique characteristics, and power dynamics (Mohajan & Mohadhan, 2022: p. 1; Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Developing African Feminist Theory or African Feminist Identity is not about synergy with Western Feminism, or Theory. It is an exercise for its own purpose and consequentiality. That is to say, the likelihood of running into a variety of approaches to feminism was theoretically and empirically high. Additionally, the Second Wave of Feminism actually advocated for the propagation of splinter groups, a process of decentralization of feminism whose aim was to empower women using techniques of sharing, and contesting articulated in “The BITCH Manifesto” (Freeman, 1972).

Sara Daleney McDougall’s (2012) research has provided that the so-called feminist model about which so much have been written, perhaps, needs to be reconsidered. To this call, Motta et al. (2011) agrees with it, provided the whole discussion of feminism is taken out of the classrooms and lecture halls into the homes of women and men from the grass-huts, through the thatched houses to middle class homes through the apartment complexes to the high-rises, to contribute to the reinvention of a new feminist ethos. Such a call sounds inspirational on paper, but human societies being what they are, such a call is already dead before it is initiated. Not every human being elects to be wise, socially conscious and progressively minded citizen (Norman, 2023, 1 a).

Despite the circumlocutions noticed about the recommendations of researchers, Oyekan raised a key question which is of interest to this paper: How do researchers define African Feminism to give full faith and credit to the rule of law, equity, equality, and universalize human rights, politics and diplomacy? The average African woman’s demographics may be pale compared to her counterpart in the Western industrialized nation, where she has, perhaps, unmet access to good medical care. In addition, she may possess the following disadvantages: lives in highly patriarchal and chauvinistic society, with unmet access to economic and other opportunities, barred by the lack of formal education to appraise her social status and involvement correctly, barred by personal lack of initiative, personal inertia, superstition, naivety and self-doubt, despite the possession of formal education and, probably from the local working class cohort with its perennial low salaries and rent seeking ideation practiced by both men and women? Such a background inspires a type of temporary and functional feminism that lasts during the life of the actor, but does not represent a common feminist movement beyond the life of the promoter.

To answer the question posed by Oyekan directly, it is only honest to say that the preponderance of the literature on the phenomenon tends to support the theory that there is nothing called African Feminist Identity or African Feminist Theory. The appropriation of Western feminist thought and identity provide us with insights into how, perhaps, African feminists and researchers of feminism saw their limitations in articulating a common definition of African feminism for all. Or, their limitations in providing for African feminist identity that would be acceptable to all the regions of Africa, moderated by religion, political and ethnic identities, xenophobia, and hate? Perhaps, the African researchers and scholars of feminism ignored this important task in order to avoid the clash of cultures as a result of the nature and constituents of African societies as they now are.

This author takes the cynical but genuine position that, perhaps, African feminist and feminist researchers and scholars intentionally chose the easier way out by copying Western feminist thought, with the additional reasoning that, African women are also women and therefore should be seen with or through the same lenses as Western women. More cynically, there appears to be a rejection of African morality and lackadaisical philosophical framework in preference for the more coherent and principled Western thought when it comes to the rights of women (Cross Jr, 1971; Downing & Roush, 1985; McDougall, 2012). James Rachels and Stuart Rachels posited in their seminal book, “The Elements of Moral Philosophy”, (2023) that Cultural Ethical Inadequacy Theory presumes that a given culture (primary) finds its own cultural ethos as inadequate in evaluating moral conduct but finds the need to access the moral and ethical precepts of another culture (secondary) to complete the analyses of its conduct. Africa continues to rely on Western philosophical thought, literature and research to develop, sometimes, not too inspiring parallel research that don’t contribute genuine new ideas to the literature or fill missing gaps in the research of a given phenomenon. Although this is an expansive claim, it seems the continent is comfortable to engage in appropriation of moral philosophy of other nations and other thinkers from other climes. Misappropriation of Moral Ethos of another culture (secondary) occurs when the culture that considers its ethos as inferior or inadequate to evaluating its conduct (primary) resorts to the appropriation or misappropriation of the ethical and moral ethos of the superior (secondary) culture (Rachels & Rachels, 2023). Another challenge is the absence of empirical basis of African philosophy or ethics. A significant number of African researchers are excessive in claiming that Africa had ethics, coded moral philosophy before the advent of Western religious and philosophical thought in Africa (Norman, & Norman, 2016). The fact of the matter is that, there is no single unifying system, evidence, or theory of moral philosophy in Africa that can be labeled as ‘African moral philosophy’, or ‘African philosophy’: the published literature has no provided society a compendium of ethics or morality called ‘the’ African (Traditional) ethics (Norman, & Norman, 2016). African Feminism appears to have erupted out of nothing, since it does not even claim to have been inspired by Western thought or personalities like Betty Friedan (Parry, 2010: p. 1584). Friedan provided the founding text of modern American feminism in her 1963 book, “The Feminine Mystique”, (ibid, 2010). William E. Cross, Jr. (1971) provided the intellectual basis for discussing Black Identity in the United States of America. Perhaps, we should wait a bit longer for the articulation of African Feminist Development and African Feminist Identity to emerge.

Table 6. List and explain the African feminine identity model.

Norman’s Table 6: Africa feminine identity model.

9. Recommendation

Right at the beginning of this paper, the author offered to attempt to articulate both a working definition of African Feminist Development, which was done and used as the foundation for the review and analysis of literature in this work.

Recommended Values for African Feminist Identity:

The African Feminist operates behind a veil of fear, potential stigmatization of being labeled a lesbian and anti-motherhood. But for the fear of African feminists, the struggle for women’s empowerment would have seen greater material successes than what is available to statistics and research as well as human development. The first item that needs to be decapitated from African Feminism is fear of social labels. Like Motta et al. (2011), McDougall (2012), the African Feminist is not ignorant about the discrimination they suffer from the capitalistic, patriarchal and tribal politics. They need to evolve on the same progression of consciousness and cognitive development as William Cross Jr, (1971) suggested for the Black Identity Development profile despite the volumes of criticisms that have since been produced against Cross’s or similar works. This is because, the average African person, man or woman is a coward and hardly speaks truth to power. The paper, Case Control Study of Heroes and Cowards, (Norman, 2023b), by this author, he found that,

“although a few of Ghana’s intellectuals and professionals have used public demonstrations, picketing, advocacy and judicial action to cause social and political transformation, most of the nation’s intellectual and professional classes display cowardice in speaking truth to power, unable to pursue noble deeds as the subaltern intellectuals of old, to create the legal estoppels against government’s or administrators’ inimical actions or corruption, due to their own immersion in corruption in the universities and public institutions. For these reasons, they are riddled with fear and cannot protest the denial of the citizens’ functioning and capabilities by public officials, as enshrined in the 1992 Constitution” (Norman, 2024: p. 125).

Unless the citizenry learns to speak for it-self, instead of waiting on a hero or heroine to do the talking for them, unless women of Africa commit themselves to true feminist principles propelled by equal rights and justice, countless feminine forums would emerge, shine for a few years, and die off like shooting stars into the black holes of patriarchal and patrimonial system and economic zones of society; so, to speak.

The African Feminine Identity Model is meant to re-start the conversation on developing the values for African Feminism for research, education and policy and for the proper articulation of what feminism means to the African, male or female.

Acknowledgement

The author is grateful to the Institute for Security, Disaster and Emergency Studies for providing the time, space and material support as part of faculty professional development, to the author in the research, preparation and production of this paper.

Funding

This research received no grant from any entity, either government, corporate, civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations or any person.

Conflicts of Interest

The author declares no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

References