Dignifying Femininity: A Challenge to Some Ghanaian Women

On Thursday April 12, 2018, BBC’s Focus on Africa featured a rather repulsive

article on some Ghanaian women. A female actor had justified her status as a kept woman – BBC’s label. A female journalist on Citi FM’s morning show had supported the actor; I paraphrase part of the journalist’s explanation: The cost of living in Ghana is very high. Accommodation is terribly expensive, it is costly to keep a vehicle …. Therefore a woman aligns herself with a married man in order to be provided with the luxuries of life. Such a nonchalant stance for possibly disrupting family life, betraying a female, destroying (girl) children’s life is numbing.

It is appalling that such a position should be taken by a career woman; it is nauseating that she is supported by another career woman. Apparently, the women in question are clueless about female independence; they obviously have little appreciation for diligence. Worst of all, the dignity that comes from enjoying the rewards of one’s hard work has eluded them. Sadly, such women miss the sterling experience of the utter satisfaction that emanates from a sense of achievement in life. Their loss! But it is a shame.

The two women might present a gloomy a picture, yet that that is the pathetic stance of a great majority of Ghanaian women. An appreciable percentage of young women strut on our campuses, yet genuine knowledge acquisition has little appeal for them. Such are happier when they circumvent diligent learning protocol in order to secure marks. They squander precious opportunity to unleash their potential, because they allow themselves to be infantilized by unscrupulous elements who support cheating and laziness. The former plunge into the kept status as students and can maintain such addiction in adult life. They covet luxury and relish ostentation.

There is nothing wrong with pursuing comfort and luxury in life, as long one proceeds conscientiously. Good accommodation, vehicles and other niceties in life come through hard work. When a person prematurely seeks such, they must resort to unscrupulous means. Such a path can only be avaricious, naïve females should know that. If the men providing the luxury did not work, would they get money to cater for both legitimate and rapacious lifestyles? And if men work, why not women? Decades after the Beijing Conference and in the year of the #Me too Movement, does any female have a cause to be a man’s kept woman? Not if she’s decent, not if she’s diligent, not if she’s intelligent. Indeed, the same argument goes for men.

Fact: A woman does not become a kept woman because choice eludes her. A female concedes to being a kept woman because she wants to reap where she has not sown, and that negates femininity. As long as a woman revels in her kept status, she has no claim to female dignity.