essay
Who is a wife?: legal expressions of heterosexual conflicts in Ghana
Female and male in West Africa • London • Published In 1983 • Pages: 144-155
By: Vellenga, Dorothy Dee.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
The Akan have as many words for marriage as the Eskimo do for snow. Marriages varied according to the differences in lineage involvement, gift exchanges, rituals, and statuses. The passing of the 1884 Marriage Ordinance Act attempted to set a standard for monogamous marriage and spousal inheritance of self-acquired property, however only ten percent of marriages followed this pattern. Conflict over inheritance often ended up in court where officials tried to determine whether or not a spouse was a true and therefore legal wife. Women began to organize in the 1950's to change the distinction between ‘wife’ and ‘non-wife’ in order to protect the interests of all women and children. The results were the passage of a Maintenance of Children Bill in 1965 and a new divorce law in 1971.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Marriage
- Family relationships
- Polygamy
- Judicial authority
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Akan
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 2000
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Africa
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Western Africa
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- essay
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Social Scientist
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 4: Excellent Secondary Data
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- Ian Skoggard ;1999
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- Not Specified
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- 1884-1971
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Fanti; Ghana
- NotesAdditional notes
- Dorothy Dee Vallenga
- For bibliographical references see source 56: Anonymous
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 82020767
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Akan (African people)