The 2017-released Ghanaian movie, Nteteye Pa, chronicles the story of two sisters, Pomaa (Emelia Brobbey) and Irene (Nana Ama McBrown), as they navigate womanhood in a typical Ghanaian society.
From adolescence to adulthood, their lives unfold as a study in contrast: Pomaa is the “ideal” dutiful, soft-spoken, and enduring woman, while the rebellious, independent Irene, resistant to domestic work, is, in the film’s moral framing, destined to “suffer.”
The film’s moral centre leaves little ambiguity: a woman’s worth lies in her ability to manage her home. Success outside that domain is rendered meaningless.
This is echoed early on when Boatemaa (Akyere Buruwaa), their mother, advises her younger daughter, Pomaa not to emulate Irene. “These things you’re doing at home,” she encourages, “are the same things you’ll be doing in your marriage.”
The advice, framed as wisdom, reveals the deeply entrenched belief that a woman’s social and personal value exists only in relation to domestic labour and marriage.
Patriarchy and the Architecture of Power
As feminist theorists Walby, Pilcher, and Whelehan have argued, patriarchy is not simply male dominance, but a system that structures social, economic, and emotional life. In Nteteye Pa, patriarchy is not merely a backdrop but a living force.
Men are granted authority that is both unquestioned and unquestionable.
When Patrick (Bernard Nyarko) scolds his wife, Irene, for her inability to cook, he laments that he would have “spent millions to make you a complete woman.” Irene’s worth, in his eyes, depends on her conformity to domestic femininity.
The scene mirrors a society where male authority is central to the social, political, and economic organisation of private life.
The Family as the Site of Patriarchal Power
The film also exposes the family as the space where patriarchy is most intimate. When Irene is mistreated by men, her family offers no refuge. Her father not only fails to support her but is the one who delivers news of her ex-lover’s marriage to their neighbour’s daughter.
His dismissal of Irene as “useless” because of her ability to express her needs reveals the emotional violence that sustains patriarchal order—the normalisation of female suffering.
In this movie, familial love is conditional, as a daughter is valued only to the extent that she upholds social expectations.
The Female Body and the Performance of Value
From the opening scene, the female body is a contested site of meaning. When Irene refuses to join her mother and sister on the farm, claiming she is unwell, we later discover her true reason: she is protecting her skin, keeping it “blemishless” for her “Prince Charming.” In that scene, and in others that follow, her body is reduced to her only currency — the measure of her future worth in the eyes of a man.
Through Irene’s vanity, the film portrays a culture that teaches women to invest in beauty as their primary form of capital. Her mockery of Pomaa’s looks with the statement, “Your face [looks] like a ramp in the Atwea Mountains,” underscores this internalised hierarchy.
In Nteteye Pa, a woman’s body is not just a personal possession but a social weapon. And an even more potent weapon, if she is lighter in complexion.
Class, Power, and the Illusion of Choice
Class division is another thread that binds the film’s gender politics. The rich and the poor are sharply contrasted, not only by material wealth but by the moral assumptions attached to each.
Prince’s mother, “Mummy” (Doris Omaboe), declares, without condescension, without pride, that Pomaa should be grateful their paths crossed because “if you knew what God has in store for you through me, you would continue to serve me.”
Harmlessly embodying the microcosm of power, the rich woman is portrayed as saviour, while the poor woman, Pomaa is depicted as the dependent of the rich, waiting to be rewarded for her domesticity of conformity.
Power in Nteteye Pa operates not through brute force but through social conditioning.
As philosopher Jana Sawicki notes, subjects are constituted by power relations, internalising and reproducing them. Mummy’s “testing” of young women to find a wife for her son, Prince (Bill Asamoah), shows how women, too, can become enforcers of patriarchy, gatekeeping the very system that subjugates them.
Domestic Division of Labour and the Ideal Woman
The film’s treatment of labour is a mirror to real social dynamics. Men are breadwinners; women, caretakers. And, to borrow Maya Angelou’s words from “Men,” the men are always going somewhere, while the women stay behind, working and waiting.
In one scene, Appiah (Sylvester Agyapong) tells his fiancée, “Sweetheart, I’ll be inside—call me when you’re done [washing],” as she toils under the sun, hand-washing his clothes. Love, in Nteteye Pa, is measured not in tenderness or partnership, but in how well a woman performs domestic duty.
When Irene’s husband publicly mocks her inability to cook—saying she was “not a woman”—the message that femininity is labour, and labour is proof of worth, was seamlessly passed.
Language, Subjugation, and the Making of Inferior
Throughout the film, gendered language serves as a weapon of subjugation. When Patrick says Irene is “good for nothing,” and Appiah praises another woman as “a woman of virtue” because she “knows how to cook, wash, and [work] like a woman,” language becomes a tool for erasure and female subjugation. Each insult and “compliment” reinforces a hierarchy where womanhood is synonymous with servitude.
As Nigerian critic Obododimma Oha notes, female subjugation thrives through symbolic violence—through everyday words that strip women of dignity while elevating men.
The Dichotomy of Value
The film draws sharp dichotomies between good and bad women; between endurance and rebellion; and between honour and shame. Pomaa, the “good” woman, is rewarded with a beautiful, enduring marriage, while Irene, the “rebellious” one, is humiliated, abandoned, and left with nothing.
But even in Pomaa’s supposed triumph, the film’s logic reveals that her value is still contingent on a man—first, her father’s approval of her as a good woman, then her husband, Prince. She ascends to goodness and personhood, not by self-determination, but by compliance and gender performativity.
In Nteteye Pa, socialisation is the invisible hand. From childhood, women are taught that their worth lies in marriage and homemaking, while men are taught that their masculinity is inherent, unquestionable, and complete.
Beyond the Frame
Nteteye Pa does not set out to oppress women; it merely reflects a worldview that does so effortlessly. Its characters act within a logic so normalised that they cannot see its cruelty. And that is precisely what makes the film a beautiful mirror of society, just like Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter.
The film is a gentle reminder that the most dangerous ideologies are not shouted but lived. Ideologies, good or bad, live in the stories we inherit, the advice we give, and the expectations we enforce.
The Tragic Ending and the Silence Thereafter
Until we begin to question the stories that shape us, women like Irene will continue to be written out of their own narratives and taught to measure their worth not by who they are, but by whom they serve.
When Irene returns to her husband’s house, having finally learned how to “cook and manage a home,” she discovers her husband is engaged to another woman. Her effort to redeem herself is rendered meaningless.
The film offers no resolution, no empathy. Only silence.
It is this silence, more than anything, that indicts the story. In refusing to acknowledge Irene’s pain or growth, Nteteye Pa reaffirms the very question it raises: What is the value of a woman?
