‘I am the daughter of a man’

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to discuss the cultural creativity that Nana Kofi Abuna V, the Chief of Essipun Traditional Area in the Western Region of Ghana, is investing in transgressing gender boundaries as a woman chief. Deploying an ethnographic research approach and biographical narrative, feminism as a methodological framework, I argue that Nana is breaking the boundaries of gender to chart new pathways as a woman chief. Nana is one of the few women chiefs in contemporary Ghana. Nana’s ascent to the stool as a chief diverges from the ‘conventional’ practice of male political rule in Akan traditional societies. Since Nana is a woman who bears a male name (Kofi), she acts as a male chief of her Traditional Area. But as a deaconess (church officer) of the Church of Pentecost (CoP), Ghana’s largest Protestant denomination, Nana did not submit to the performance of the rituals of chieftaincy during her installation. Similarly, Nana’s Pentecostal leaning does not permit her to perform ‘chiefship’ rituals. This goes contrary to the centrality of Akan chieftaincy as an ancestral cult and its attendant rituals. Nana, as a Pentecostal woman chief, therefore, breaks through culturally-induced gender boundaries to perform chiefship roles.