ZEF Gender Group Meeting

November 11, 2020 | 15:30 h - 16:30 h

ZEF Gender Group Meeting

Speaker: Dr. Akurugu  

Topic: Redeploying the Abjection of the Pog Gandao ‘Wilful Woman’ for Women’s Empowerment and Feminist Politics in a Mystical Context

About the speaker: Dr Constance Awinpoka Akurugu is a lecturer in sociology and gender studies at the SDD University of Business and Integrated Development Studies, Ghana. She is also a gender activist. Dr Akurugu is interested in postcolonial and African feminisms as well as transnational feminist discourses. She also focuses on cultural translation of theory and decolonisation. In terms of empirical research, she is an ethnographer and focuses on gendered power relations more broadly. Specifically, she focuses on gender justice, marriage equality, gender-based violence and gendered cultural practices in northern Ghana. As well, she is interested in the mystical world of the ethnicities in northern Ghana, particularly, the way in which the belief in the pervasiveness of non-human agents such as the supposed supernatural forces of witchcraft, juju and the ancestors structure gendered, agentic and resistance practices in these settings.

In this presentation, she explores the possibilities of positively reclaiming a local concept, Pog gandao (‘woman who is more than a man’), which is used to stigmatise strong-willed women who are thought to ‘do’ their gender in ways that are normatively considered as ‘masculine’, as an avenue for empowering women in the pervasively supernatural settings of the Dagaaba of north-western Ghana.

Please receive Zoom details by sending email to Dr. Avilés: davilesi(at)uni-bonn.de

Upcoming ZEFGG Lectures and ZEFGG meetings: 26.11 and 17.12.2020