Masculinity and Spousal Violence: Discursive Accounts of Husbands Who Abuse Their Wives in Ghana

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of cultural notions of masculinity and its enactments on husband-to wife abuse in Ghana from a discursive psychological perspective. Two focus group discussions and four in-depth personal interviews were conducted with 16 perpetrators (husbands) from rural and urban Ghana. Participants’ discursive accounts revealed that social anxieties of husbands, their fear of being perceived by others as weak or emasculated, and their disappointment with unfulfilled notions of masculine sovereignty influence conjugal violence. Perpetrators constructed a wife’s expression of dissent to her husband’s wishes and commands as an encroachment on masculine spaces, a gender-norm violation, or as providing a public challenge to male identity and thus violence could be used as an obligatory passage to manhood. Perpetrators also mobilized shifting and ambivalent discourses that draw upon culturally familiar notions of maleness to both resist and authorize a patriarchal privilege in marriage.

Full text

ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Masculinity and Spousal Violence: Discursive Accounts
of Husbands Who Abuse Their Wives in Ghana
Stephen Baffour Adjei
1
Published online: 22 September 2015
#Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015
Abstract This study investigated the influence of cultural
notions of masculinity and its enactments on husband-to-
wife abuse in Ghana from a discursive psychological perspec-
tive. Two focus group discussions and four in-depth personal
interviews were conducted with 16 perpetrators (husbands)
from rural and urban Ghana. Participants’discursive accounts
revealed that social anxieties of husbands, their fear of being
perceived by others as weak or emasculated, and their disap-
pointment with unfulfilled notions of masculine sovereignty
influence conjugal violence. Perpetrators constructed a wife’s
expression of dissent to her husband’s wishes and commands
as an encroachment on masculine spaces, a gender-norm vio-
lation, or as providing a public challenge to male identity and
thus violence could be used as an obligatory passage to man-
hood. Perpetrators also mobilized shifting and ambivalent dis-
courses that draw upon culturally familiar notions of maleness
to both resist and authorize a patriarchal privilege in marriage.
Keywords Maleness .Intimate partner violence .
Sociocultural .Communal self .Identity .
Discourse analysis .Africa
Spousal violence is a global health threat which resonates in
many societies. It is estimated that 38.6 % of all femicidal
killings worldwide occur in intimate relationships (Stöckl
et al. 2013). In Africa, violence against intimate partners is
very pervasive with between 20 and 71% of women reporting
abuse by their spouses (Antai and Antai 2008;Jewkesetal.
2002). Wife-beating is quite a common form of punishing
women in many societies in Ghana (Nukunya, 2003)and
may occur in the event of a woman’s failure to ask for her
husband’s permission before engaging in certain activities
(Adomako-Ampofo and Boateng 2007). Official police re-
ports over the past decade suggest increasing rates of violence
against women and girls in Ghana (Appiahene-Gyamfi 2009).
A recent report by the domestic violence and victim support
unit (DOVVSU) of Ghana disclosed 15, 495 cases of battered
women in 2011 (International Federation of Women Lawyers-
FIDA Ghana 2013).
Although the education and financial independence of
women have been suggested as key protective factors for
spousal violence in Ghana (Mann and Tayi 2009), the eradi-
cation of spousal abuse in Ghana may require more than these
initiatives. For example, out of 50 educated women
interviewed, Amoakohene (2004) reported that about 70 %
of them had experienced partner abuse, particularly physical
violence at the hands of their husbands, a situation they attrib-
uted to women’s subservient status to men in Ghana. Spousal
killings are sometimes portrayed as justified by the Ghanaian
media, given the culture’s perception of men’s privileges and
roles as family heads and primary providers (Adomako-
Ampofo and Boateng 2007). Despite growing changes in at-
titudes and practices due to the influences of formal education
and globalization, the archetypal Ghanaian family continues
to be a highly patriarchal institution (Adinkrah 2014).
There is a burgeoning body of research that links mascu-
linity with intimate partner violence (IPV). Many of these
studies indicate that IPVoccurs when men are unable to mea-
sure up to socially constructed ideas of what it means to be a
‘successful’man (e.g., Gelles 1974; Jewkes 2002;Jewkes
et al. 2014). Violence has been proposed as a Bresource for
demonstrating and showing [that] a person is a man^(Hearn
*Stephen Baffour Adjei
bstephen@psy.au.dk
1
Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, Aarhus
University, Bartholins Allé 9, Building 1350, Room 520,
DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
J Fam Viol (2016) 31:411–422
DOI 10.1007/s10896-015-9781-z

1998, p. 37). Physical punishment of women may be tolerated
in societies where there are rigidly defined and enforced gen-
der roles; where masculinity is conceptualized as toughness,
dominance, and male honour (Ellsberg and Heise 2005).
Gelles (1974) further argues that when a man’s identity is
challenged, he is more likely to lash out at his wife in order
to maintain some semblance of male power. Men who are
unable to fulfill socially assigned instrumental roles (e.g.,
breadwinner) feel less secure or feel that their position is
threatened. Their perceived marginality and insecurities in-
crease their propensity to abuse as a mechanism to maintain
their male identity (Mann and Tayi 2009). The major stereo-
type that arguably forms the basis of spousal abuse is one in
which male individuals dominate, control, and use power
whereas women do the opposite (Roger 2001). This body of
research demonstrates that masculine identities are construct-
ed through the ability of men to control their partners by acts
of violence.
Despite a few research studies that link masculinity with
partner violence in Africa, particularly in South Africa (e.g.,
Jewkes 2002;Jewkesetal.2014), research on masculinity-
induced spousal violence is generally lacking in West Africa
and Ghana in particular. The purpose of this study is to explore
the influence of masculine notions and enactments on
husband-to-wife abuse in Ghana. It investigates husbands’
(perpetrators) discursive constructions of masculinity and
male authority and how these practices influence the use of
violence against women in Ghana.
Understanding Masculinity as a Homosocial
Enactment
The concept of masculinity is sometimes used to synony-
mously refer to male, man, manhood as well as used to mean
the direct opposite of femininity (Connell 2005;Kimmel
2001). Masculinity, as a gender identity, is not a fixed entity
embedded in the body or personality traits of individuals;
neither does it exist in absolute terms which one either has
or does not have. It is a relational concept which changes over
time and space and is constructed in discursive fields. Mascu-
linity is not a manifestation of an inner biological essence but
rather, it is socially constructed and is a creature of culture
(Kimmel and Ferber 2003). Connell (2005) defines masculin-
ity as a simultaneous place or position in gender relations and
practices through which men and women engage. Masculinity
can be distinguished from gender role (i.e., behavioural ex-
pectations related to more or less static social positions) in
terms of the former’s processual and dynamic nature where
meanings are attributed by and to individuals through social
interactions over time (Bird 1996). An almost universal fea-
ture of manhood is that it must be achieved—it requires be-
having and acting in specific ways before one’ssocialgroup
(Connell 1995,2005;Gilmore1990). Achieving manhood is
in effect socially evaluated or judged by other men and wom-
en in a given sociocultural context. A reputation for toughness
and strength is somewhat valued as a core component of mas-
culinity (Gilmore 1990).
According to Connell (1995), men aspire to a form of mas-
culinity called Bhegemonic masculinity;^that is, a culturally
dominant ideal of masculinity centered on authority, physical
toughness, and strength. However, rather than an already
known fixed set of dominant ruling ideas, a particular
content or set of representation, Wetherell and Edley (1999)
view hegemonic masculinity as a relative position in a discur-
sive field. Thus, masculine hegemony is a version of the
world, plural, inconsistent, and effected through discursive
practices, constantly needing to be brought into being over
and over again in space and time. There are many different
ways of being a man (multiple masculinities) within a given
society but dominance and control overwomen are frequently
part of the set of male attributes and behaviours (masculinity)
that is recognized as a shared social ideal (Connell 2005). The
fact is that not all men are violent and some actively oppose
violence. Nonetheless, most men remain complicit with the
norms of hegemonic masculinity due to patriarchal privileges
or ‘hegemonic dividends’(Connell 2005). Connell (2005)
further observes that patriarchal dynamics secure a general
lead position for men over women, as well as marginalizing
all men that do not fulfil normative male attributes. As
Gilmore (1990) argues, to be socially meaningful, the decision
of manhood must be characterized by enthusiasm combined
with stoic resolve. It must show a public demonstration of
positive choice, of jubilation even in pain because manliness
represents a moral commitment to defend the society and its
core values against all odds.
Masculine enactment and the maintenance of hegemon-
ic masculinity have been linked with homosociality. Ho-
mosociality refers to same-sex social relationships that are
not based on sexual or romantic interest (Lipman-Bluman
1976). Although homosociality is by definition not mascu-
linity, it has been emphasized that masculinity is a homo-
social enactment; that is, men test their masculine identity,
perform heroic feats and take enormous risks all because
of the need for masculine identity approval from other
men or to be accepted into the realm of manhood (Kim-
mel 2001). Homosocial interactions among heterosexual
men are believed to contribute to the maintenance of
norms of hegemonic masculinity by supporting meanings
associated with identities that fit hegemonic ideals while
suppressing meanings associated with non-hegemonic mas-
culine identities (Bird 1996). Homosociality can also be
performed discursively by individual men through discur-
sive constructions that orient toward preferred and domi-
nant ruling ideals of masculinity embedded in a given
sociocultural environment.
412 J Fam Viol (2016) 31:411–422

Communalist Ontology of Personhood in Ghana
The concept of communalism, used to describe a general
worldview of Ghanaians, has been defined as Bthe doctrine
or theory that the community (or, group) is the focus of the
activities of the individual members of society^(Gyekye
1996, p. 36). The doctrine of communalism provides insight
into the Ghanaian view of personhood (the fact of being a
person, having those qualities that confer distinct individuali-
ty) as basically social and normative. Adams and Dzokoto
(2003) describe West African personhood as relational, con-
nected to pre-existing social forces by default of existence.
The communalist view of personhood in Ghana is based on
the idea that the identity of the individual is never separable
from the sociocultural environment. Thus, identity, in this
context, is not some Cartesian abstraction grounded in a so-
lipsistic self-consciousness; rather, it is constructed in and at
least partially by a set of intersubjectively shared beliefs, pat-
terns of behaviour, and expectations (Hord and Lee 1995). In
the communalist ontology of self, individuals exist as persons,
as members of a group, and as members of a community; all of
which are constantly interacting and inter-penetrating one an-
other. The community and social norms play a significant role
in the processual nature of being in Ghana and Africa in gen-
eral—one becomes a person only after a process of incorpo-
ration into a community (Menkiti 1984). Personhood is thus a
becoming rather than being (existence); something which
must be attained, and not granted simply because one is born
human.
Although not in the sense of being less valued, connection
to relational others is framed as a secondary product in West-
ern contexts, rather than as a default fact of existence or being
(becoming) in Ghana (Adams and Dzokoto 2003). The West-
ern individualistic conception of personhood views and iden-
tifies a person descriptively as a metaphysically isolated indi-
vidual who has personhood Boutside and irrespective of the
normative and cultural structures of the community and the
human relationships that define and sustain a community^
(Ikuenobe 2006, p. 56). Thus, the saliency and influence of
the community dissolves because the individual is regarded as
autonomous being with the freedom to decide whether or not
to accept the norms of a community and how he or she uses
them to guide thoughts and actions.
Although one can find traces of individual autonomy in the
African context, the notion of an individual as not normatively
shaped by the community to which he belongs, but viewed as
an abstract dangling personality, does not make sense in many
African cultures including Ghana (Menkiti 1984). Commu-
nalist oriented people see and identify themselves in terms
of how their community trains, shapes, and morally educates
them to acquire personhood, and how their moral thinking is
shaped by the context of the community in relation to their
action and behaviour (Ikuenobe 2006). Identity, in these
contexts, is typically defined in terms of how others, be they
individuals or groups, influence the person (Markus and
Kitayama 2010). People in these contexts tend be more con-
cerned about others’approval because of the logic that a per-
son’s identity and self-worth is socially conferred or denied. In
this view, men’s communal sense of self as ontologically con-
nected to and socially evaluated by other men, women, and
children in society may heighten their awareness of their
masculine identity. For example, Adams (2005)observesthat
the tendency for individuals to feel that they are under intense
social evaluative scrutiny by others (participants’relational
sense of self or objective self-awareness) has considerable
negative implications for interpersonal relationships in Ghana.
It is important to mention that this study does not assume that
the communalist orientation or Western conceptions of per-
sonhood are monolithic, fixed, and static worldviews. Thefact
is that people in Ghana and elsewhere participate in and con-
struct practices common to their environment differently;
however, they do so through culturally resonant social dis-
courses. Thus, notions of maleness in Ghana may be con-
veyed and made effective in men’s psyche through discourses
of their relationality and public self-consciousness.
Constructing Masculinity in Ghana
The phenomenon of masculinity, its social constructions, and
embodied cultural notions is not new to research in Ghana.
Constructions of masculinity in Ghana are not homogenous,
as different ethnic and social groups chose different points of
orientation and the ways by which men enact and view mas-
culinity. For example, among pre-colonial Asantes (an Akan
ethnic group) of Ghana, cultural notions of masculinity em-
phasized men’s ability to exercise authority and control over
women and junior males, capacity to amass wealth, and their
demonstration of personal courage and bravery through heroic
military actions or valiant deeds (Obeng 2003). Multiple
forms of masculinities such as adult, senior, and
BPresbyterian^masculinities also existed among the Kwahus
(Akans) of Ghana during the late nineteenth and late twentieth
centuries (Miescher 2005). Presbyterian masculinity, promot-
ed by the Basel missionaries to scorn local notions of mascu-
linity, embodied such ideals as hardwork, moderation, law-
abiding behaviour, monogamous marriage, primary allegiance
to wife, church, and children, and only subordinate to the
abusua (lineage) (Adinkrah 2012;Miescher2005).
Normative understanding of masculinity and femininity in
contemporary Ghanaian society includes a belief in funda-
mental biological differences between male and female hu-
man nature with corresponding behavioural prescriptions
(Adinkrah 2012). Behaviourally, men in Ghana are expected
to be active, assertive, daring, tough, and dominant while
women must be gentle, passive, submissive, and nurturing
J Fam Viol (2016) 31:411–422 413

(Adinkrah 2004). The daring, fortitude, and invincibility of
men in Ghana is so rooted in cultural expectations that signs
of indecision or cowardice are associated with femininity and
become the basis for social stigmatization and mockery of
men (Adinkrah 2012; Miescher 2005). For a married man,
successful masculinity is measured by his ability to exercise
authority and control over his wife and to provide economic
and material needs for his wife and children even if a wife
earns more than her husband (Adinkrah 2012; Nukunya,
2003). Men who are unable to fulfill their primary breadwin-
ner roles are socially stigmatized and regarded as mmarima
hunu (useless men) (Adinkrah 2012). Furthermore, a ‘real
man’is equated with the virility of a patriarch who begets
children, particularly sons. Male sexual dysfunction in Ghana
is acutely emasculating and embarrassing to men because it
challenges traditional notions of manhood. Male pre-marital
and post-marital sexual double standardness is a permitted
cultural practice among all ethnic groups in Ghana
(Adinkrah 2012) and male sexual prowess and virility is
sometimes demonstrated by having multiple partners
(Minkah-Premo 2001), procreation (Adinkrah 2012), and sex-
ual satisfaction of a partner (Nukunya, 2003).
Masculinity in Ghana, like personhood, is believed to be
achieved or a place to be arrived at in stages and over time and
that it must be won and defended (Adomako-Ampofo and
Boateng 2007). Being a ‘man’in Ghana is something that
one could fail to become or be incompetent at, and thus must
be attained through incorporation and the learning of gendered
or social rules. One of the principal social requirements for
being incorporated into the realm of manhood in Ghana is
marriage. The traditional position in many Ghanaian societies
is that a woman is never wholly independent; she must always
be under the guardianship of a man, a father or a lineage head.
When a woman marries, her original guardian hands over all
or some of his responsibilities and rights to which he (the
father or lineage head) is entitled to the husband, who in re-
turn, makes some form of marriage payment (bride price)
(Nukunya, 2003). Thus, while marriage enhances a man’s
status from boyhood to manhood, free from the mundane
responsibilities of household management as well as granting
him the authority over the conjugal family, marriage for wom-
en in Ghana means a transfer of an authority figure or set of
authority figures (father/parents or lineage head) for another
(husband) (Adomako-Ampofo and Boateng 2007).
There is a general cultural expectation in Ghana that wom-
en must acquiesce to men’sauthority,especiallywithregardto
husbands’wishes and commands (Adinkrah 2012). A wife is
expected to show maximum respect, kindness, and obedience
to her husband. In almost all Ghanaian societies, a wife is not
expected to call or address her husband by his personal or first
name but instead, she is supposed to use a term (such as
Bmewura^[my lord] among the Asantes) which refers to
him as her master (Nukunya, 2003). These culturally defined
gender expectations are adhered to in varying degrees among
individual men in Ghana. As indicated earlier, the object of
this paper is to explore the extent to which masculine dis-
courses and enactments explain husband-to-wife abuse in con-
temporary Ghana.
Method
Discursive Psychology
The present study draws insights fromthe theory and methods
of discursive psychology (Potter 2003; Potter and Wetherell
1987; Wood and Kroger 2000). Discursive psychology in-
volves the application of ideas from discourse analysis to the
study of social phenomena in psychology (Potter 2003). Dis-
course analysis is both a method of conceptualizing and ana-
lyzing language (McMullen 2011). Discursive psychology
provides a systematic framework for the analysis of interviews
and interactional data (Seymour-Smith et al. 2002). It gener-
ally studies the flow of meaning making and how this flow is
patterned, what shapes it, and how it is organized as mundane
culture and a recognizable intersubjective communication
(Hodge and Kress 1988; Wetherell 2003). Discursive psychol-
ogy pays attention to action orientation of talk; that is, how
participants in social interactions use discursive resources to
achieve a certain effect (Wetherell and Potter 1992; Willig
2013). The way people speak about the world cannot be sep-
arated from their understanding of the world (Wetherell and
Potter 1992).
Thus, the emphasis is not on whether or not what people
say is ‘true’but rather on understanding how certain ‘realities’
are produced and presented as ‘true’(Wetherell 1998). The
‘truth’about a given psychological phenomenon is not given
by individual participants in a social discourse but effected
through the lenses of their given context because participants
in a social interaction are both producers and products of cul-
ture within their social environment (Adjei 2013). Culture, in
this view, is not fixed but considered as patterns of represen-
tations or actions that are distributed by and constructed
through social interactions (see Kitayama and Cohen 2007).
Discursive psychologists pay attention to interpretative
repertoire, that is, terminologies, stylistics, and grammatical
features, preferred metaphors and figures of speech, and gen-
eral commonsensical ways used by members of a given com-
munity to characterize and evaluate actions (Potter and
Weth erell 1987). The construction of self is deeply embedded
in social discourses and discursive analysis is very relevant for
the study of identity as constructed in discourse, negotiated
among speaking subjects in a given social context, and as
emerging subjectivity and sense of self (Bamberg et al.
2011). Discursive psychology also emphasizes the dialectic
relationship in which social realities and subjectivities are
414 J Fam Viol (2016) 31:411–422

constituted historically, politically, and socially at a macro
level, whilst being drawn upon and produced in here-and-
now dynamic constitutive interactions (Wetherell and Potter
1992). Structure and culture condition our understanding and
social construction of gender and thus essential to locate gen-
der relations in a broader socio-historical context. Tal k about a
social issue such as masculinity is organized as social action in
its immediate context, and also around culturally resonant
interpretive resources that reveal the shared sense-making dis-
courses of participants within a given broader social and his-
torical context (Edley and Wetherell 2001). The signature fea-
ture of discourse analysis is its flexibility and reflexivity,
where historical and sociocultural experiences of both re-
searchers and participants shape and direct data interpretation
and analysis (Adjei 2013).
Participants and Study Location
The sample consisted of 16 perpetrators of husband-to-wife
abuse from rural and urban Ghana between the ages of 24 and
55 with an average of four to 20 years of marriage. The ma-
jority of participants (n=14) were Akans (the largest ethnic
group in Ghana), while the remaining were Ewe (n=1), and
unknown (n=1). They were mostly commercial drivers (n=
6), farmers (n=5), teachers (n=4), and a petty trader (n=1).
The rural sites were in the Ashanti region while the urban sites
were suburbs in Kumasi (Ashanti) and Accra (the Greater
Accra region) of Ghana.
Design and Procedure
The present study analyzed empirical material obtained
through semi-structured focus group discussions (FGDs) and
in-depth individual interviews conducted with 16 male perpe-
trators of spousal violence in Ghana for a period of 7 months,
beginning from January to July 2014. Participants were sam-
pled through home and community visits, contact with a Do-
mestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU), and
other snowballing contacts. The purpose of the study was
introduced to DOVVSU and community/opinion leaders
who usually settle cases of spousal abuse. They in turn
assisted in identifying potential participants. Additional re-
cruitments were made through snowballing contacts provided
by recruited participants. The DOVVSU is a specialized unit
of Ghana Police Service responsible for preventing crimes
against women and children and to particularly provide them
with protection from domestic violence. The unit was created
by an Act of Parliament, Act 732, in 2007. It was formerly the
Women and Juvenile Unit (WAJU) established in 1998
(Amoakohene 2004). Contact with the DOVVSU and com-
munity leaders who settle cases of marital abuse ensured the
recruitment of participants with richer knowledge and insights
into the phenomenon of spousal violence.
The purpose of the study was explained to all prospective
participants prior to selection and each interview. They were
also informed that participation and/or answering of questions
were voluntary. The inclusion criterion was inflicting of phys-
ical and/or sexual abuse (self-reported) on a current or past
partner. This selection is appropriate for the study because no
one knows more about abuse than those who experience it
(DeKeresdy and Dragiewicz 2007) and regardless of how
one explains violence in intimate relationships, the perspec-
tives one offers may remain irrelevant to those who actually
experience it (DeKeresdy and MacLeod 1997). Two focus
group discussions (FGDs) were held, one each for rural and
urban perpetrators. Each FGD was composed of six partici-
pants. Additional in-depth personal interviews were conduct-
ed with four perpetrators (different from FGD participants),
two each from rural and urban settings. For purposes of con-
fidentiality, analysis, and reporting, the researcher adopted
codes for FGD participants to reflect their status, interview
site, and ordinal position. For example, RP1 and UP1 repre-
sented rural perpetrator number one and urban perpetrator
number one respectively.
All interviews and discussions were conducted in Twi ,
the most widely spoken Ghanaian language belonging to
the Akan ethnic group. The use of Twi enabled participants
to flexibly express themselves and created a relative power
balance between the researcher (a native speaker of Twi)
and the participants on one hand, and among participants
on another. There is a relationship between language and
power in Ghana; people who speak English, particularly in
the rural areas, are generally considered more powerful
because they are regarded as belonging to the elite class
in the Ghanaian society. The FGD lasted between 45 and
60 min while individual interviews lasted between 25 and
35 min. The interviews were held at convenient locations
selected by participants. Informed consent was obtained
from participants to indicate their voluntary participation.
All the FGDs and individual interviews were audio-
recorded with the consent of participants and later tran-
scribed by the researcher. Additional non-participatory ob-
servation of customary and church/ordinance marriage and
marital dispute arbitration were conducted, as well as field
notes taken by the researcher to augment the interview
data.
Method of Analysis
The overall analysis of the data reflected my primary concern;
that is, exploring husbands’(perpetrators) discursive construc-
tions of masculinity and male authority in marriage and
whether these masculine enactments induce spousal abuse in
Ghana. The researcher carefully listened to recordings (in
Twi) with intermittent back and forth movement in order to
check and recheck for data accuracy. The researcher then
J Fam Viol (2016) 31:411–422 415

translated and transcribed a greater part of the interviews from
Twi into English for purposes of conceptual formulations and
reporting. The researcher iteratively read the transcribed data
to have an intimate and interpretive familiarity with the data
set. Transcripts were then imported into NVivo 10 for inclu-
sive coding; that is, searching and grouping of extracts related
to constructions of masculinity and spousal violence (Potter
2003). Different words or phrases that were repeatedly used
and pointed to the regularity and patterns of participants’dis-
courses were assigned to data corpus. For example, partici-
pants’discursive accounts of masculinity, relative to their per-
sonal and communal sense of embeddedness, were identified,
coded, and mapped for further analysis and formulations.
Selection of extracts for analysis then became focused
based on the context of what was said, how participants said
it and why they may have said it. Particular attention was paid
to what was being said by participants, their choice of words
and expressions, voice tone, as well as facial and other bodily
gestures—they all reflect discursive practices embedded in
participants’cultural milieu (Potter and Wetherell 2001). The
assembled discursive patterns were further pruned down and/
or merged. Instances of masculinity related discourses from
the data crystallized into different categorizations and natural-
ly emerged patterns and concepts were formulated and
interpreted in view of contextual features such as history,
values, beliefs, and culture. Beyond the linguistic flexibility
of discursive practices and negotiation of meaning in here-
and-now interactions, the analysis also attended to the broader
social and institutional contexts of Ghana as well as social
consequences and background normative conceptions that
shape participants’deployment of discursive resources to con-
struct masculinity (Wetherell 1998;McMullen2011). Extracts
from interview transcripts alongside interpretations that have
been made of them are presented below.
Findings
Three main discursive patterns were identified in participants’
accounts as linking cultural notions of masculinity to the per-
petration of spousal violence in Ghana: (1) Discourses of mas-
culine anxiety and disappointment; (2) spousal abuse as a
punishment for encroachment on masculine space and gender
norm violation; and (3) authorizing dominant cultural dis-
courses of male dominance through complicit and ambivalent
positioning.
Discourses of Masculine Anxiety and Disappointment
As can be inferred from the excerpt below, participants con-
structed husband-to-wife abuse in Ghana in terms of hus-
bands’gendered anxieties, their fear of being seen by others
as weak and controlled by their wives.
A man has to always stamp his authority in his home. If
a wife challenges or disrespects your views as a man,
people will equally not respect you because they will
think that you cannot even control a woman. A man
loses his title as the head of the family if your wife
disrespects you or controls you. Your own children
may not give you maximum respect because of what
the wife does (Urban perpetrator, personal interview).
This construction resonates with cultural discourses of
manhood and highlights the perpetrators’discursive ‘per-
formance’of homosocial connections with other men and
the dominant ruling ideals of masculinity in Ghana. The
perpetrator’s repeated reference to the collective identity
Bman^instead of himself, illustrates homosocial
performance—that is, discursive orientation toward pre-
ferred and embedded ideals of maleness. The rhetorical
strategy of referencing the collective male identity (Bman^)
allows the perpetrator to distance himself from his violent
act while diffusing his personal agentive role in collective
gender notions. The discursive alignment with other men
reflects the participant’s intersubjectivity and shared forms
of sense-making from a commonly understood experience
of masculinity, which regulates and maintains a taken-for-
granted and largely invested patriarchal privilege in mar-
riage. It is suggested in the quote that the authority of
husbands becomes threatened by a perceived Bchallenge^
or Bdisrespect^of wives, and may thus it be appropriate for
amantoBstamp his authority in his home.^
Again, the perpetrator constructs spousal violence as a
mechanism employed by husbands to safeguard their
(headship) Btitle^in marriage. The interpretive repertoire of
Blosing a title^illustrates deep-seated beliefs about masculine
entitlements and authority in marriage. The obviousness of the
argument in the quote is that, in the eyes of other Bpeople^
(onlookers), men risk social derision if they are not seen as
defending their historically given Btitles as heads of the
family.^By justifying his violent attack on the altar of social
expectations of culturally appropriate masculine behaviour,
the perpetrator enacts and promotes masculine hegemony.
He constructs a man’s strong and permanent influence
(Balways stamping his authority^)on his wife as an obligatory
passage to realms of manhood. He appears to be intuitively
aware of (unseen) relational gazes and evaluative scrutiny of
other men, women, and children, whom he perceives as
assessing him on a masculine scale. The apparent anxiety of
the perpetrator about third-party beliefs resonates with the
cultural affordances of embedded interdependence in Ghana,
and an interdependent sense of personhood as an object of
other people’s attention. Perceived opposing behaviour of
wives challenges a-taken-for-granted masculine image that
men wish to maintain in marriage and causes them social pain.
Thus, violence is constructed as a demonstrative response to
416 J Fam Viol (2016) 31:411–422

repair a perceived social injury caused or likely to be caused to
men’s pride system and masculine ego.
Perpetrators justified husband-to-wife abuse by drawing on
discourses associated with social sanctions and gender-norm
transgressions in Ghana:
Any man will feel hurt if your wife, at the least thing,
argues and refuses to accept you as the head of the fam-
ily. How will people think of me; that I am weak and
allow my wife to control me? […] sometimes a man has
to act to show that he is in control; that I’mnot
Bobaafadie^[sissy] (Rural perpetrator 4, FGD).
As implied in the quote, masculinity is constructed as a
difference from femininity (Bobaafadie^). A wife’s open
expression of dissent to her husband’scommandsiscon-
structed as offensive to masculine ethos in Ghana and
appears both personally and socially hurtful as it threatens
culturally familiar discourses of male sovereignty in con-
jugal relationships. Spousal violence is thus positioned as
an act born out of husbands’heightened masculine iden-
tity awareness—their fear of being regarded as
Bobaafadie^(sissy)byothermenandwomeninsociety.
The Bobaafadie^repertoire suggests an embodied account
denoting effeminate qualities of a man or the height of a
man’s timidity, which is a huge source of psychosocial
pain to men in Ghana, particularly in the eyes of other
meninsociety.Asaresult,theperceivedlackofmascu-
line control and power may engender in men masculine
identity disappointment; which I define as a feeling of
dissatisfaction in men that results from unrealized cultural
notions and expectations of masculinity. As suggested in
the quote, if a husband is unable Bto act to show that he is
in control^of his conjugal home, he feels disappointed
and threatened. The apparent threat of wifely disrespect
unsettles assumed positions and deflates a husband’scul-
turally given identity. Such threats evoke a sense of fear
in men—the fear of masculine failure—thefearofbeing
ridiculed and/or emasculated, of being regarded as
Bobaafadie^by other men, women, and children in socie-
ty. To fend off negative social appraisals and to restore a
masculine sense of adequacy, a husband may have to oc-
casionally Bact^violently toward the perceived source of
threat to demonstrate that Bhe is in control.^
As evident in the above extracts, masculinity does not in
itself cause spousal violence. Rather, it is the complex rela-
tionship between perceived threat to normative masculine
ideals and perpetrators’imagined social evaluations by others
that influence conjugal violence in Ghana. The feeling of
masculine disappointment and the accompanying sense of fear
is not only induced by men’s perceived identity failure, but
also, it arises from heightened public self-consciousness of
men and their anxiety about others’social evaluations. In other
words, conjugal violence in Ghana could be understood as an
outcome of a complex and dynamic relationship between
cultural/social constructions of masculinity and men’s rela-
tional sense of personhood.
Spousal Abuse as a Punishment for Encroachment
on Masculine Space and Gender Norm Violation
In relation to masculine anxiety discourses of men, partici-
pants also constructed wife abuse as a punishment for
gender-norm violations or as an infringement on a masculine
space. For example:
She talked back at me in a commanding tone and her
voice could be heard everywhere in the community.
This is not how women behave in our society and as a
man in the house I had to teach her a lesson […]Ihadto
let her and everybody know that I am the husband […]I
married her (Rural perpetrator, Personal interview).
In this quote, the perpetrator portrays spousal violence as a
way of creating, demonstrating, and affirming assumed mas-
culine authority in marriage. While, Bas a man in the house^,
he is entitled to command his wife into unquestioned obedi-
ence, the wife does not enjoy the same privilege as she is not
expected to Btalk back to her husband^much less talk Bin a
commanding tone.^Such a conduct is positioned by the per-
petrator as a contrast to Bhow women behave^toward men in
society and thus amounts to a gender-norm violation or
annexing male authority in marriage. Thus, wifely opposition
to a husband’s command is constructed as a disruption of the
binary discourse around masculinity/femininity and around
traditionally assumed husband-head/wife-subordinate power
relations among conjugal partners in Ghana. In this view, mar-
ital relationship is positioned as involving a cluster of rights
and duties as well as prohibitions or denials of certain con-
ducts considered as culturally inappropriate (see Harré and
Moghgaddam 2003). The perceived turn of power relations
in marriage could emasculate a man and provoke the use of
violence to Bteach [the wife] a lesson^or to reestablish male
status as Bthe husband,^the one who Bmarries^rather than
Bbeing married.^
A similar kind of reading can be made of the following
quote; BIt was not my fault to slap her. She argued with me
as if she was in charge of the house. A woman must be sub-
missive to her husband and not challenge him^(Urban perpe-
trator, FGD). Rather than accepting responsibility, the perpe-
trator locates the cause of his action externally, constructing it
as a legitimate punishment for gender norm transgressions. He
discursively unpacks notions of masculine entitlements by
distancing his personal agentive role while positioning non-
submissive behaviour of wives as a violation of gender norm
and/or a subversion of social order. By constructing wifely
J Fam Viol (2016) 31:411–422 417

argument as publicly undermining male authority and gender
ethos of the community, he could be seen as managing per-
sonal accountability for violence. The wife is thus constructed
as a ‘gendered’power usurper and culturally illegitimate
claimant to conjugal authority. It can be seen from these dis-
courses that spousal violence is positioned as a ‘perfor-
mance’— as a simultaneous performance of masculinity and
femininity—as a means for husbands to live up to contextu-
alized versions of manliness, while ‘teaching’perceived erring
wives how to successfully ‘perform’or live up to an expected
feminine standard of behaviour in marriage. Participants’dis-
cursive practices clearly evince the fact that spousal abuse in
Ghana could be understood as masculine ‘enactments’;as
social masks worn by husbands to achieve traditional defini-
tions of maleness and masculine confirmation in Ghana. Abu-
sive tendencies of husbands appear to be a fulfilment of a
given masculine sense of entitlement, enforced by unspecified
and/or unseen relational and evaluative gazes of bystanders or
Beverybody^(men, women and children) in the Ghanaian
society.
Authorizing Dominant Cultural Discourses of Male
Dominance Through Complicit and Ambivalent
Positioning
Another pervasive pattern of participants’discourses was mul-
tiple positioning of (hegemonic) masculinity. These positions
are ordered by and situated within dominant cultural dis-
courses that frame women as subordinate to men in marriage.
Idon’tthinkmywife’s disagreement or argument with
me makes me feel less masculine. As a man, I don’t
have to depend on my wife. I have to work hard to take
care of my family and I have to be strong and responsi-
ble; I think that makes a man […] I am not the type of
husband who think that a woman should not have a say
in anything in the house; yes you can talk but as a man I
make the final decision and my wife knows it (Rural
perpetrator, personal interview).
The perpetrator in the quote appears to reframe and
distance himself from familiar notions of masculinity that
emphasize women’s unquestioned obedience to their hus-
bands’wishes. It appears that in order to create a male
identity along the lines of embedded masculine discourses
in Ghana, a husband must not be seen as Bdependent on
[his] wife,^but instead, he must Bwork hard and be strong
and responsible.^The quote shows a shifting construction
of masculinity and dominance as the perpetrator moves
between conflicting ideologies of masculine authority in
marriage in ways that reduce his masculine complicity
and dominance. He positions the self as both participating
in and denying ‘hegemonic’forms of masculine authority.
In constructing his masculine identity as willing and ac-
commodating, while distancing himself from familiar dis-
courses of maleness in Ghana, he appears to be aware of
and resistant to certain extreme forms of male control that
denies women their agency and individuality in marriage.
The perpetrator disclaims and separates his version of
masculine belief from certain assumed notions of male-
ness that measure its ideals and worth according to strict
and imposed rules on women.
By his discursive denial of connection with hegemonic
forms of masculinity, the perpetrator provides an effective
warrant for his masculine ‘otherness’and simultaneously
authorizes a benign version of masculine dominance in mar-
riage. Although he denies personalassociation with the taken-
for-granted discourses of masculinity in Ghana—BIamnot
the type of husband who thinks that a woman should not have
a say in anything in the house^—he nonetheless draws on
similar gendered discourses to emphasize alternative forms of
masculine control and dominance; B…as a man I make the
final decision and my wife knows it.^His reaffirmed position-
ing of the self as a Bman^that follows his disclaimer betrays
his prior construction of the self as unaffected by stereotypical
notions of masculinity, and thus exposes him to charges of
complicit masculinity. Despite his attempt at positioning him-
self as an ordinary, normal, and accommodating husband, in
the light of the discourse; Bas a man I make the final decision,^
he equally comes across as enmeshed, subjectified, and or-
dered by embedded notions of maleness in Ghana. Thus, his
alternative masculine ‘otherness’is complicit in normative
ideals of masculine dominance in marriage because he draws
on culturally resonant discursive repertoire of gender practices
in Ghana. For example, the claim by the above rural perpetra-
tor to Bfinal decision^echoes the repertoire of defending a
masculine authority and title stated earlier by an urban perpe-
trator; BA man has to always stamp his authority in his
home…a man loses his title as the head of the family if your
wife disrespects you or controls you^(see urban perpetrator,
personal interview, in the section on masculine anxiety).
In both instances, masculinity appears to be constructed
as centered on authority over women and as an already
known, timeless, and fixed set of ruling ideology rooted
in patriarchy. The rhetorical robustness of the resistant po-
sitioning lies in the fact that it allows the perpetrator to
bolster his masculine otherness as a model of male author-
ity. The apparent resistant position could be a discursive
strategy mobilized flexibly in specific time and space to
contest, reframe, and sanction new forms of masculine
dominance in marriage. He suggests, by this discursive
device, that men in Ghana are not passive receptors of
socioculturally given notions of masculinity, but instead
are active agents, who through constructive internalization
of the collective culture, construct and reproduce embed-
ded gendered behavioural prescriptions.
418 J Fam Viol (2016) 31:411–422

Discussion
This study has examined the ways in which husbands enact
masculine notions through talk and how these enactments
influence wife abuse in Ghana. Discursive accounts of partic-
ipants revealed that husbands’anxiety over masculine image,
relative to their objective sense of personhood, influences the
use of violence against their wives. Men construct wifely ar-
gument or disagreement both as a personal threat to their
masculine identity and self-ego and a subversion of the social
and moral ethos of the Ghanaian society. They become unset-
tled by the perceived threat and experience masculine identity
disappointment, as they dread social derision or being
emasculated by other men, women, and children in society.
As Adjei (2015b) points out, most men in Ghana, in relation to
their communal sense of identity, generally risk public scorn
when they are not seen as publicly demonstrating prototypical
behaviours consistent with cultural notions of masculinity.
Perpetrators in this study also constructed husband-to-wife
abuse as a justified and just punishment for women for violat-
ing culturally assumed gender norms or encroaching on mas-
culine spaces. They further managed their accountability for
acts of violence by blaming their wives for usurping mascu-
line authority in the conjugal home. Previous studies have
shown that intimate partner violent men draw on cultural dis-
courses to perform Bmasculine^behaviors, reproduce a binary
framework of gender, and blame female partners as responsi-
ble for violence in their relationships (Anderson and
Umberson 2001). It is said that men usually construct mascu-
linity in the plural rather than in the singular (Connell 1995)
and as different from femininity (Edley & Wetherell, 1997).
Apparently, husbands in this study draw upon cultural notions
as central resources to construct spousal violence as a
performance of masculinity and femininity; as a means for
husbands to live up to an idealized identity of maleness while
‘teaching’their wives how they ought to ‘perform’expected
feminine behaviour.
The fear of diminished masculine reputation, in the eyes of
social observers, provokes husbands to act violently towards
their wives in order to reestablish masculine status, reassert
male control and power, or to gain masculine confirmation.
Men’s fears and feelings of masculine inadequacy result from
their heightened (psychological) need for social endorsements
from other men in society. Clearly, the view of oneself (per-
sonhood), in relation to embedded social others, shape the
degree to which men in Ghana become conscious of norms
of masculinity in their self-constructions. Their preoccupation
with maintaining a certain public/masculine image is often
propelled by a hypersensitive concern over what others might
think of them as men. The recognition that the head of the
conjugal family is not as powerful as beyond a wifely ‘chal-
lenge’or disagreement results in identity disappointment and
social pain. Perpetrators’sense of masculine identities do not
make sense of or directly lead to violence except by reference
to the collective notions of maleness and the attendant social
expectations. Thus, sociocultural notions of maleness (social
constructions of gender) and men’s communal sense of self,
(psychological understanding of personhood) in Ghana ap-
pear mutually constituted in dynamic and interactional
complexities.
The view of ourselves is to some extent manifested in the
social roles we perform because social roles help to elaborate
and shape our intuitions about personal identity (Adeofe
2004). Men’s identity disappointment and the resultant social
anxieties become prominent and socially stressful when men
attempt to make sense of the cultural environment in which
they are embedded. Some men embark on role-playing mas-
culinity and in so doing neglect their own personal feelings
which would otherwise undermine their Bmale image.^They
thus easily lose touch with, or run away from, their feelings
and awareness of themselves as individual persons and unwit-
tingly wear a social mask fulfilling the traditional definition of
Bmasculine-appropriate behaviour^(Goldberg, 1991). As
Anderson and Umberson (2001) point out, violence is an ef-
fective means by which batterers reconstruct men as
masculine and women as feminine. In their recent
comprehensive study in India, Nanda et al. (2014)emphasized
that masculinity, that is, men’s controlling behaviour and gen-
der equitable attitudes in relationships, strongly determines
men’s preference for sons over daughters as well as their pro-
clivity for violence towards an intimate partner.
Evidently, beliefs and expectations of third-party social
evaluations and enforcement of appropriate masculine behav-
iour appear to represent one of the elaborate cultural and psy-
chosocial mechanisms by which men maintain their lead role
and perpetrate violence in marriage, even in the face of their
own reluctance to masculinity-induced violence. As Reed
(1972) has noted, sometimes people are violent, even when
they don’t want to be, because there will be penalties such as
disgrace—because they fear being disgraced for not being
violent. This is a male harness that most men live in, which
some have little awareness that it is choking them until their
personal life crumbles and falls apart (Goldberg, 1991). The
dialectic and complex relationship between normative con-
structions of masculinity and men’s self-perception as targets
of social others’evaluative scrutiny provides a significant ba-
sis for understanding the relationship between husbands’en-
actments of masculinity and male authority in marriage in
Ghana. When this complex relationship between the social
and the psychological; between cultural notions of masculin-
ity and individual men’s psychological sense of self is made
visible, behavioural variations among men/husbands in Ghana
in terms of their use and non-use of masculinity-induced vio-
lence will be understood too.
This study also contributes to the understanding that men
do not internalize norms of masculinity and violence to the
J Fam Viol (2016) 31:411–422 419

extent to which collective culture and social expectations pre-
scribe. As the analysis revealed, husbands in Ghana are not
only positioned by a ready-made or historically given set of
masculine discourses, but they also construct and appropriate
these cultural repertoires individually within their given social
and political context. Some perpetrators offered shifting and
contradictory positions of self and masculine dominance with-
in their accounts. They seemed not to aspire to extreme
(hegemonic) forms of masculine ideals by either associating
with a less extreme form of masculinity or by distancing them-
selves from masculine ideals that do not allow women to
express their individuality in marriage. However, rather than
willing and innocent men who disapprove of masculine hege-
mony and control over women, these men remain complicit
with hegemonic forms of masculinity insofar as they all draw
on familiar gender dichotomization discourses embedded in
society to (re)construct alternative forms of male dominance
in marriage. This is consistent with the view that ideological
drive of discourse depends on contradictions, dilemma, and
complex multi-faceted positioning of self and other, mobilized
in multiple rhetorical directions with varying effects for social
relations (Edley and Wetherell 2001). It has been recently
reported that young men deploy paternalistic ambiguous
discourses to justify physical IPVand traditional gender rela-
tions that emphasize men’s power and status in the gender
order (Salazar and Öhman 2015). Clearly, one of the most
effective ways of being hegemonic, or being a ‘man’,may
be to demonstrate one’s distance from hegemonic masculinity
(Wetherell and Edley 1999). The paradox of hegemony is that,
sometimes what is most hegemonic is to appear non-
hegemonic; that is, an independent man who comes across
as in control of his own mind and who can see through social
expectations.
Discourses of participants in this study are not arbitrary
connections that license men’s exercise of control and use of
violence against their wives. Rather, they are purposive and
action-oriented dominant cultural discourses (Potter and
Weth erell 1987) which draw on and are effected through fa-
miliar interpretive notions of gender practices in Ghana. A
person is not free to adopt any gender position in social inter-
action simply as a discursive or reflexive move without
reflecting on an embodied set of rights and duties that limit
the possibilities of realizing actions in a given context (see
Harré and Moghgaddam 2003). Adjei (2015a) has observed
that collective identity interacts and operates with personal
meaning systems in Ghana, and gender relations are person-
ally constructed through human creativity and patterns of so-
cial organizations in society. Discursive constructions of mas-
culine authority in marriage and its relationship to spousal
violence in Ghana should be understood both as reflecting
participants’interactional needs in here-and-now social dis-
course and as embodied historical and sociocultural non-
discursive dimensions of gender relations. Discursive
possibilities about gender relations are largely constrained by
embodiment, by institutional histories, by economic forces,
and by personal and family relationships. As Rubin (2003)
observes, discursive constructions sometimes embody actions
because of the unshakeable convictions of being a man. Thus,
the discussion of spousal abuse would be incomplete without
putting perpetrators and victims, values and practices, and
male and female roles in relationships in an institutional and
historical context.
Conclusion
As accounts of husbands in this study suggest, the sturdy
moral core—the central organizing feature of maleness in
Ghana is structured according to the logic that a man’s worth
and dignity is socially conferred. Discourses of masculinity
and how they influence spousal abuse inGhana are not held in
any sense by individual men; but rather, they emerge and take
shape in a collectivity, as a gestalt, in the coming together of
group ideals, perceptions, and expectations where no individ-
ual man holds the entire representation on his own. Thus,
masculinity-motivated wife abuse in Ghana reflects the em-
bodied convergence of men’s subjective perceptions of their
masculine image and the objective sense of personhood as an
object of third-party evaluations, enforced by institutional his-
tories. To better understand masculinity-induced wife abuse in
Ghana, it may be important to take into account the dynamic
interactional complexities between contextualized and consti-
tuted discourses of maleness and individual men’scommunal
sense of personhood in society. A more comprehensive an-
swer to the complex and dynamic nature of spousal violence
in Ghana requires an understanding ofthe association between
violence and masculinity. It may be a missed opportunity to
discuss widespread violence by married men without a careful
analysis of the complex gender relations and the contextual-
ized discourses of identities of both men and women in
Ghana.
Acknowledgments I would like to thank all participants who spent
their time to talk about their personal and difficult experiences ofspousal
abuse.
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