That evening, the evening I became a woman, began like any other. I had stepped out just before dusk, when the sky still held onto the last of its colour—soft purple, pale blue, kind orange. The sun spilled its light in gold ribbons, coating everything with warmth, so that everything glowed with the godlike radiance of love. It had become my ritual to walk through the quiet suburbs to the hills, where I could climb the rocks, breathe in the green, and look out at Accra lying still on the horizon.
The danger of society’s insistence on the single, simplified version of a woman’s story lies not just in invisibility and misrepresentation, but in the erasure of that complexity and flattening of her humanity. When women are portrayed solely as sexual objects (not subjects, for women are rarely the subject of sexual desire), intellect and agency are dismissed.
Cover Image Courtesy: Alvin Balemesa // Unsplash The recent explosive growth of the global beauty industry reflects society’s intensifying obsession with beauty. Surging from $100 billion in 2021 to over $1.1 trillion in revenue between 2022 and 2023, the industry generated $528.59 billion in 2022 and $579.20 billion in 2023, with projections indicating continued expansion to $648.60 billion in 2024…
Cover Image Courtesy: Clarke Sanders // Unsplash As we celebrate the strides made toward gender equality and move toward gender equity, it seems a critical narrative – the consequences of toxic masculinity – is being overlooked. Societal expectations have forced men into rigid moulds, as culture continues to prioritise male stoicism, dominance, and aggression over essential human qualities like vulnerability,…
The perpetuation of harmful gender stereotypes in Ghanaian media contributes significantly to the erosion of women’s contribution and the marginalisation and exclusion of women, strengthening existing social and economic disparities.
To illustrate, Ghana stood out as one of the top three economies in the 2020 MasterCard Index of Women Entrepreneurs (MIWE), boasting an impressive percentage of female business owners.
