Does religion motivate gender based violence in indigenous Africa? An investigation into the indigenous religion of the Asante and gender based violence

Abstract

The paper studies the Asante, an ethnic group in Ghana, to understand their notions on religion, gender and violence with the view of answering the question: Does religion motivate gender based violence in indigenous Africa? It investigates the existence of gendered violence and how it is related to religion. Religion is understood here as a practice and at the same time a worldview – an ideological framework used to interpret, understand and respond to occurrences in the world. Gender, however, is seen as a sociological factor. A careful examination of interviews of ritual specialists, community leaders and sixteen focus group discussions reveals that among the Asante there is 'ritual violence', which is gendered but religion and gender based violence should not always be interpreted from the perspective of power relations of inequality and exploitation of women as feminists theorists often see it. Rather, among the Asante religion pays attention to the protection of women from violence. The ambiguity is that while in one instance religion protects women because of its understanding of femininity, in certain instances it exploits violently femininity for varying purposes. In the same way masculinity is not spared in this exploitation. Thus, sometimes, it is the idea of what constitutes male and female that largely underpins gender-based violence among the Asante but not because of gender inequalities and exploitation