The Missing Half of the Bargain

Ghanaian women were taught to defer to their husbands by a culture that once made sure deference was protected. The protections are gone. The rule stayed.

Naa Amerley Sowah wrote the message 4 times before she sent it.

It was 11:40 p.m. on a Tuesday in June, and she was at the dining table of the flat she and her husband rent in Haatso, laptop open on the school fees spreadsheet she has kept since their daughter started Primary 1. She is 34, manages procurement for a logistics company off the Spintex Road, and spends her days telling suppliers, politely, that they will be paying a penalty.

The first version said what she had already decided, that she would take Naa Koshie's Term 2 fees out of her December bonus. She deleted it. The version she sent asked her husband whether he thought that was all right.

He replied at 6:10 the next morning, 2 words long. She thanked him, then made breakfast in a house whose school fees she has paid by herself for 2 years.

We are having the wrong argument about submission. In the churches, the marriage classes and the group chats where men explain what a wife owes, the question is whether Ghanaian women should still defer to their husbands. Both sides are answering a question from decades ago. The rule about deference survived the move into the modern generation and cosmopolitan living. What did not survive was everything that used to sit on the other side of it.

Naa Amerley is not a timid woman, and that needs saying first. In a decade and over 2,400 counselling sessions, I have met very few women in her position who ask permission out of fear. They ask because they were taught to, and they were taught by everybody to.

Her mother ran a shop for 20 years, and arguably, was a Makola Magadjia, and still waited for her father to speak first at any family gathering. Then there was the pre-marital course at her church in Adenta, 8 Saturdays with an elder and his wife of 31 years, who put it plainly. A wife who tells her husband what she has decided has taken the house from him. A wife who asks him what he thinks of what she has decided has left him his place in it. The decision is identical. The money is identical. Only the grammar changes. Ask, suggest, propose. Do not announce, do not insist.

What she was asking permission for was to spend money she had earned, on a bill she was already carrying alone, for a child they had together.

Then there is the conveniently abridged theology. Ephesians 5 is opened at verse 22 at most events that it is invoked, where wives are told to submit. But the sentence begins a verse earlier, with an instruction that everybody submit to everybody. By verse 25 it has turned to the husband and given him the more expensive assignment, to love his wife the way Christ loved the church, which cost Christ his life. Read whole, it is a mutual obligation with the heavier end on the man. Read from 22, it is a list of duties for the wife and nothing for the husband.

The older arrangement gave her something back. Marriage was contracted between families, and hers did not withdraw after the ceremony. In Akan communities the property line ran through her mother's people, her children belonged to that lineage, and her uncle could be called to answer for the marriage. Patrilineal families arranged it differently and still stood behind her. If a husband stopped providing, there were people with standing to say so to his face, and the drinks and the money could be sent back. Deferring inside that structure was not weakness of character. It was reasonable, because somebody stood behind it.

None of that required her to be idle. Ghanaian women have always earned. The World Bank puts female labour force participation here at around 65%, against a world average nearer 51%. What changed is the address. The marriage happens in a rented flat where 2 years of rent is demanded upfront, though the Rent Act allows a landlord to ask for 6 months. Her family is in Kumasi, his in Koforidua. They live at Haatso. The elders are in a WhatsApp group and cannot summon anybody who chooses not to be summoned.

Men have not come out of this well either. The older headship came with supervision: a man who stopped providing could be summoned by his wife's family and shamed in front of people whose opinion he could not afford to lose. No such body exists now. What he has instead is the final word on decisions he did not fund and cannot assess, and many of the men in my consulting room cannot say what that final word is for. This creates room for passive or active rebellion that he can neither stop nor control. His authority is reduced to mere words and opinions because the financial power to back them up has been stripped away, or was never consolidated in his hands to begin with. He remains the nominal head of the home, yet decisions are made without him, leaving him powerless to object.

In principle, there is nothing wrong with a wife making these decisions or moving independently. However, men are socially conditioned to lead, take charge, and have the final say. Even when a husband lacks the wherewithal to take action, and even when his wife’s intervention is completely harmless, he still feels a subtle, gnawing pressure to assert control, demand the last word, and be the one who signs off on projects.

In my experience, speaking to a lot of Ghanaian men in counseling, when men drag their feet, act nonchalant, or emotionally withdraw, it usually stems from the exact same root: a lack of financial capacity to execute. Dragging their feet buys them time; time to rally support from friends, secure a bank loan, or pull off some quick side-hustle (kpa kpa kpa) maneuver.

It gets worse. A wife who has the resources to accomplish in the blink of an eye what he cannot is often perceived as a threat. In his mind, letting her proceed feels like emasculation. That frustrates her, because things need to get done. That frustrates him, because he is aware she is furstrated by his lack of action.

None of this is based on real substance; it is driven by deeply ingrained cultural narratives around power, authority, and control. Yet these very expectations are wrecking homes, creating immense stress that leads to severe health issues, and leaving women feeling hindered and curtailed. Ultimately, this builds a litany of grievances that justify divorce, and ensures that when a man threatens to walk away, his wife is no longer inclined to back down.

There are women who defer by choice, are content, and need no rescuing. What separates them from Naa Amerley is not what they do at 11:40 at night. It is whether they could do otherwise.

There is an obvious answer to this and it deserves stating at full strength. If the protections are gone and the ability to provide fully is on a limp, the rule goes with them. No arrangement in which a woman asks permission to spend her own salary on a bill she has carried alone for 2 years survives being read aloud.

But look again at that Tuesday. Naa Amerley did not submit to her husband. She could not have. Submitting means handing over something that was yours to hold, and holding it was never on offer. She made the decision, then translated it into a question, because stating it was also not an option.

That has a consequence neither side of the argument wants. The woman with her own salary, her own name on the tenancy and somewhere to go if she needs it is the first in our history for whom submission is a real choice rather than the only available move. Her grandmother did not choose it. Her grandmother ran the numbers and stayed even when she was the main person running the show.

Naa Amerley asked her husband a question in June, on a Sunday afternoon, nothing wrong. She wanted to know what he thought a term's fees came to. Not to make a point. Just the figure in his head. He said a number under half of what she pays, and then he was quiet for a long time. They have not done anything with that silence. Couples who get past this stage tend to end up in the same place, with both names on the tenancy and the account, splitting bills and authority, and either of them able to stop a decision the other started. They feel a sense of equality, which gives them some emotional anchor and psychological sense of being a part of the bigger scheme of things. She is nowhere near there. What she has managed so far is to stop thanking him for permission to spend her own money, which he has noticed and has not mentioned. But the fact remains, decisions around the house runs through him even if she is bankrolling it. It only a question of the grammar. PG Sebastian

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Most couples arguing about submission are not arguing about theology. They are arguing because they each agreed to a word before marrying without checking what the other one meant by it. There is a conversation in Marriage Chat that works through exactly this. It does not tell you what submission should mean in your home. It asks the two of you what you each thought you were agreeing to, and where those two answers stopped matching.

Free to begin. app.stepstoforever.org