Bewitching the State

Abstract

The 1970s was a period of extreme economic stress and scarcity in Ghana. Under these conditions, Ghanaians deployed gendered discourses like fa wo to bɛgye golf [bring your bottom in exchange for a (VW) golf] to discipline young, urban women. This popular discourse, which appropriated prevailing nationalist rhetoric, accused young women of transgressing the bounds of good citizenship and imperiling the military government’s nation-building project. Perceptions of women’s superior economic position vis-a-vis salaried male workers posed a threat to gender ideologies that consigned women to the home. Newspapers provide overwhelming evidence of intense contestations over gender roles, particularly within intimate relationships. Situating 1970s Ghana within frameworks of gendered citizenship, and rumor as discourse, I argue that Ghanaian women were both subjects and actors in the material and discursive realms of the economy and sexuality. This positionality served as a focal point for critiques of the Ghanaian state and public corruption. Placing Ghana’s 1970s nationalist project in conversation with others on the continent, this article challenges the historiographical neglect of this period, thereby broadening our understanding of the contested nature of gender, citizenship, and women’s bodies/sexuality.