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Definition Of My Educational Pursuit

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The main question that sums up the theme of my educational pursuit is, “When customary systems of kinship, land tenure and property distribution exclude women from owning or managing household resources, how do they manage?” I have witnessed first-hand, the long-standing feud between my father’s family and my mother. After my father’s death, my mother was thrown out of her husband’s home in a town in Ghana because of traditional notions of inheritance. She started a “table-top” shop in front of her family home where she sold all kinds of goods, ranging from food items to clothes. As a young child, I would take care of my mother’s shop when she went to get more goods to restock. Together with my siblings, we successfully managed her…show more content…
What makes Talensi patrilineal lineage a concern is that it not only shapes the social organization of the household, but also the organization of work and other economies. Women devise their own responses in dealing with the challenges in order to improve their benefits, especially their wages. One of the measures the women use to improve their income is to form networks of associations. The associations can be financial, where the women contribute into a savings fund locally known as susu and receive lump sums while rotating the contributions in turns, or the association can be for the purpose of welfare, such as supporting the members in difficult situations, such as bereavement.
The overall goal of my research is to explore how the socio-economic roles of women involved in the Talensi small-scale gold mining activities in Ghana produce opportunities and challenges for them. Specifically, my research:
1. Investigates the intersection between women’s expected socio-economic roles in the mining activities and the Talensi social organization
2. Examines women’s rights to the mining resources (income, land, mining pits, and houses) and in other spheres/organizational contexts
3. Investigates women’s response to the challenges of gender roles and their rights In the Talensi mining industry, the social and cultural ideologies of the society pervade the organization of the mining industry,
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