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Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma
ISSN: 1092-6771 (Print) 1545-083X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wamt20
Sociocultural Groundings of Battered Women’s
Entrapment in Abusive Marital Relationship in
Ghana
Stephen Baffour Adjei
To cite this article: Stephen Baffour Adjei (2017) Sociocultural Groundings of Battered Women’s
Entrapment in Abusive Marital Relationship in Ghana, Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment &
Trauma, 26:8, 879-901, DOI: 10.1080/10926771.2017.1284171
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10926771.2017.1284171
Published online: 17 Mar 2017.
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Sociocultural Groundings of Battered Women’s
Entrapment in Abusive Marital Relationship in Ghana
Stephen Baffour Adjei
Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, Faculty of Education and Communication Science, University
of Education, Winneba, College of Technology Education, Kumasi, Ghana
ABSTRACT
While social psychological theorizations have contributed to
our understanding of why battered women continue to remain
in abusive intimate relationships, its apparent exclusive focus
on individual victims’psychological orientation leaves little
conceptual space for discovering the subtle ways by which
social and cultural norms shape the stay/leave decisions of
victims of spousal violence. Drawing upon discursive psychol-
ogy, this study explores the sociocultural groundings of stay/
leave decisions of battered women in Ghana. Semi-structured
focus groups and personal interviews were conducted with 32
participants: 16 victims and 16 perpetrators from rural and
urban Ghana. Discursive accounts of participants suggest that
post-divorce social stigma, remarriage alternatives, and post-
divorce child care, as well as privacy framing of marital abuse
function in concert to influence battered women’s entrapment
in violent marital relationships. The article argues that, rather
than individual psychological orientation, the decision to stay
in or leave abusive marital relationships in Ghana is sociocul-
turally and structurally grounded. To understand the highly
complex nature of spousal violence, one must always go
beyond the person and his or her psychological orientations,
and seek the origin of battered women’s entrapment also in
the external conditions of life, and in the sociocultural and
structural forms of human existence.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 10 August 2016
Revised 15 November 2016
Accepted 26 December 2016
KEYWORDS
aggression; battered
women; discursive
psychology; entrapment;
Ghana; sociocultural; spousal
violence; victimization
Aggression in an intimate relationship is a disturbing global social
phenomenon. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2013)estimates
that, globally, almost one third (30%) of all women who have been in a
relationship have been physically and/or sexually abused by their inti-
mate partners. The report further reveals that as high as 38% of all
femicidal killings (murders of women) occur in intimate relationships
(WHO, 2013). Africa has the highest prevalence of physical and/or
sexual intimate partner violence (IPV), with approximately 37% of ever-
partnered women having experienced physical and/or sexual violence at
some point in their lives (WHO, 2013).
CONTACT Stephen Baffour Adjei stevoo24@yahoo.com Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, Faculty of
Education and Communication Science, University of Education, Winneba, College of Technology Education,
Kumasi, Ghana.
JOURNAL OF AGGRESSION, MALTREATMENT & TRAUMA
2017, VOL. 26, NO. 8, 879–901
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10926771.2017.1284171
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
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Ghanaian society is highly patriarchal and research reports in Ghana show
that husband-perpetrated spousal abuse is quite a common form of punish-
ing women and may be applied in the event of a woman’s failure to ask for a
husband’s permission before embarking on certain ventures (Adomako-
Ampofo & Boateng, 2007; Nukunya, 2003). A 1998 survey on domestic
violence in Ghana indicated that one in every three women had suffered
physical abuse by a current or most recent male intimate partner (Coker-
Appiah & Cusack, 1999). The Women and Juvenile Unit of the Ghana Police
Service (WAJU, now Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit
[DOVVSU]) recorded 1,869 cases of marital abuse between January 1999
and December 2002 (Amoakohene, 2004). In the first quarter of 2002, the
mass media in Ghana reported of 13 uxoricidal killings (husband-perpetrated
spousal murder; (Spousal Killing, 2002). Between 2009 and 2010, the
DOVVSU also recorded 14,428 and 12,316 cases of abuse against women,
respectively (GhanaWeb, 2011).
Although abuse perpetrated by intimate partners violates most people’s
fundamental hopes and expectations for a close relationship (Arriaga &
Capezza, 2011), victims of spousal abuse in Ghana and elsewhere continue
to remain in violent marital relationships (Adjei, 2012; Ofei-Aboagye, 1994).
Research indicates that IPV victims continue to stay in violent relationships
for various reasons, such as social stigma; victims’internalized sense of
failure or self-blame, and external or partner-blame (Eckstein, 2011); feeling
of shame, helplessness, and low self-esteem (Loke, Wan, & Hayter, 2012).
Research suggests that women who justify wife beating in Ghana have higher
odds of experiencing physical and sexual violence (Tenkorang, Owusu,
Yeboah, & Bannerman, 2013). However, discourses both within and outside
the family in Ghana suggest that when a woman is physically and/or sexually
abused, it is not too unusual to warrant divorce (Adjei, 2015a). For instance,
it has been observed that wife beating in Ghana may be considered by the
extended family as “little”or “insignificant,”which should not merit mention
(Ofei-Aboagye, 1994). This may be because the family and the Ghanaian
society generally look down upon divorce (Adinkrah, 2008), to the extent
that some abused women prefer to remain in violent marital relationships to
preserve their family image (see Adjei, 2015a). A report by the United
Nations (UN, 2011) indicates that over 40% of Ghanaians think it is justifi-
able for a man to beat his wife. A similar survey report by the Ghana
Statistical Service (GSS, 2011) reveals that as high as 60% of women and
36% of men believe it is justifiable for husbands to beat their wives in Ghana,
with an acceptance rate of 70% and 51% for rural and urban women,
respectively.
Despite a handful of extant legal and sociological research on the preva-
lence of abuse and victimization in Ghana (Adinkrah, 2012; Amoakohene,
2004; Bowman, 2003; Coker-Appiah & Cusack, 1999; Ofei-Aboagye, 1994),
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there is a dearth of psychologically informed perspective that examines the
psychosocial and cultural accounts of battered women’s entrapment in
Ghana. The purpose of this study is to fill this void by drawing upon
discursive psychology to explore the sociocultural accounts that shape the
stay/leave decisions of victims of spousal abuse in Ghana. In the following
sections, a few of the major psychological theorizations of entrapment are
described as well as the communalist ontology of personhood in Ghana as
theoretical considerations relevant for framing entrapment.
Social psychological theorization of entrapment
Psychologists have, over the years, suggested several theories to address the
most frequently asked question of why battered women continue to stay in
abusive intimate relationships. Most of these theories have victims’commit-
ment—an individual’s intent or resolve to keep a relationship and to remain
psychologically attached to it—as the major determinant of entrapment (see
Dare, Guadagno, & Muscanell, 2013; Rusbult & Martz, 1995). For example,
the theory of cognitive dissonance, which exemplifies the principle of com-
mitment and consistency, has been deployed to explain why some women
remain with their abusive partners. Cognitive dissonance fundamentally
suggests that accepting two opposing beliefs results in a cognitive discomfort
that motivates a person to either alter one of the existing beliefs to be
consistent with the other or reduce the importance of any one of the
conflicting cognitions (Festinger, 1957). Consistent with cognitive disso-
nance, Arriaga and Capezza (2011) theorized that people who are less
committed to their abusive partners might (because of the negative belief)
create a sense of equilibrium by feeling more negative about the relationship.
On the contrary, individuals who are more committed to their aggressive
partners might be cognitively motivated to feel positive about the partner and
thus adopt a less negative perception about the partner’s abusive behavior
(Arriaga & Capezza, 2011). In effect, highly committed victims of IPV may
hold a tolerant view about abuse and remain in their relationships because of
a psychological urge to reduce dissonance or the conflicting cognitions of
high commitment and negative view about partner’s abuse, in order not to
give rise to feelings of uneasiness.
A similar commitment-dependent theorization has been suggested from
an investment model perspective. Focusing on the situational, structural, and
interdependence nature of relationships, Rusbult and Martz (1995) have
proposed that stay/leave decisions of victims of IPV are moderated by
three processes positively associated with commitment levels: satisfaction
level, quality of alternatives, and investment size. They suggest that high
level of satisfaction, the extent to which an individual favorably evaluates a
relationship, directly influences high commitment level and low satisfaction
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level lowers commitment level. A high level of satisfaction has been observed
as influencing stay/leave decisions of battered women (Edwards, Gidycz, &
Murphy, 2011). Alternative quality, the attractiveness and availability of
choices to relationship, is also noted as shaping commitment level in an
unsatisfying relationship (Rusbult & Martz, 1995). The commitment of
victims to an unsatisfying relationship is likely to be weaker when attractive
alternatives are available to them than when there are none (Rusbult &
Martz, 1995). Thus, victims of IPV are more likely to exit abusive relation-
ships when, for example, options such as a possibility of remarriage, social
support from family and significant others, or individual skills and compe-
tencies that enhance alternative living exist. Conversely, when choices avail-
able to victims are limited and unappealing, or when there is a fear of the
unknown future, abused partners are more likely to feel deeply committed to
unsatisfying relationships and are less likely to leave (Pilkington, 2000).
The final commitment-related variable of the investment model is invest-
ment size, defined as “the number and magnitude of resources that are tied
to the relationship”(Rusbult & Martz, 1995, p. 560). Direct investments, such
as time; self-disclosure; emotional energy; and indirect investments like
children, mutual friends, and shared possessions, are believed to enhance
commitment level and thus decrease the likelihood of terminating abusive
relationships. For example, commitment to an unsatisfying intimate relation-
ship should be greater among victims who have been involved with their
partners for relatively longer periods, among partners who are married rather
than cohabitating or dating, and among women who have a greater number
of children with their partners (Dare et al., 2013; Rusbult & Martz, 1995).
The key assumption of the investment model is to de-emphasize research
theorizations that focus on the battered individual’s personal dispositions to
explain stay/leave decisions of battered women.
A more recent theorization by Dare and colleagues (2013) draws upon
Foot-in-the-Door effect and cognitive dissonance theory to argue that both
commitment to an abuser and the motivation to maintain consistency
between individuals’attitudes and actions can best explain why some
women choose to remain in an abusive relationship. For example, they
have theoretically proposed that, to want to maintain consistency with pre-
vious commitments, abused women’s consistency in accepting minor abuse
within a relationship may cause them to eventually remain in an unhealthy
relationship. While these psychological and individualized frameworks con-
tribute to our understanding of the complex social phenomenon of IPV and
victimization, they leave little conceptual space for discovering the broader
psychosocial and sociocultural accounts of stay/leave decisions of battered
women. Its one-sided focus on victims’psychological orientation (e.g., com-
mitment and the need for cognitive consistency) leaves victims’entrapment
analysis and stay/leave decisions at the personal rather than at the structural
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level of society in which they are embedded. As stated earlier, this study
draws on the social representations of communal life in Ghana to develop a
framework in which battered women’s entrapment could also be understood
from social conditions and dominant cultural discourses of society.
Communalist positioning of personhood in Ghana
Ghanaian society is socially organized and generally communal (Adjei,
2015b). Gyekye (1996) defines the concept of communalism as “the doc-
trine or theory that the community (or, group) is the focus of the activities
of the individual members of society”(p. 36). People within the social
context of Ghana generally express their sense of self (personhood) in
relation to their community and this communal self-positioning gives
form and direction to thought and social behavior. The doctrine of com-
munalism provides insight into the Ghanaian view of personhood (the fact
of being a person, having those qualities that confer distinct individuality)
as basically social and normative (Adjei, 2015b). Thus, personhood in
Ghana is relational, connected to pre-existing social forces by default of
existence (Adams & Dzokoto, 2003). The communalist understanding of
personhood is based on the idea that identity of the individual is never
separable from the sociocultural environment. In the communalist ontol-
ogy 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 another. Thus, identity in this context is constructed
in and at least partially by a set of shared beliefs, patterns of behavior, and
expectations. Personhood in the Ghanaian society is thus a becoming
rather than being (existence); something which must be attained and not
granted simply because one is born human.
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 does not make sense in many African
cultures including Ghana (Menkiti, 1984). Identity, in these contexts, is
typically defined in terms of how others, be they individuals or groups,
influence the person (Markus & Kitayama, 2010). The communal orientation
of persons in Ghana prime them to be more concerned about others approval
because of the logic that a person’s identity and self-worth is socially con-
ferred or denied (Adjei, 2016). The communal feature of the Ghanaian
cultural and moral life has important implications for the study of battered
women’s stay/leave decisions in abusive marriages. For example, Adjei
(2015a) observes that battered women’s commitment to self-expression
may be subjugated to the social and family order in Ghana. It has also
been reported that participants’relationality or objective self-awareness—
the tendency for individuals to feel that they are under intense social
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evaluative scrutiny by others—has considerable negative implications for
interpersonal relationships in Ghana (Adams, 2005).
Although context is a far more important consideration than consistency
in social behavior in Ghana, this study does not assume that the communal
life in Ghana is absolute and overarching cultural orientation that converts
all members of the Ghanaian society into automatons of social compliance,
completely under the influence of ‘otherness.’The fact is that people in
Ghana and elsewhere participate and construct practices common to their
environment differently; however, they do so through culturally familiar
social discourses. Thus, battered women’s agentive positioning and beha-
vioral choices in abusive relationships may be grounded in their relationality
and public self-consciousness.
Method
Discursive psychology
The present study draws insights from the theory and methods of discursive
psychology, which involves the application of ideas from discourse analysis to
the study of social phenomena in psychology ((Potter, 2003; Potter &
Wetherell, 1987). Discourse analysis is both a method of conceptualizing
and analyzing language (McMullen, 2011) and provides a systematic frame-
work for the analysis of interviews and interactional data (Seymour-Smith,
Wetherell, & Phoenix, 2002). Discursive psychology generally studies the
flow of meaning making and what shapes it (Hodge & Kress, 1988), and
pays attention to action orientation of talk; that is, how participants in social
interactions use discursive resources to achieve a certain effect (Wetherell &
Potter, 1992; Willig, 2013).
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 culture within their social
environment (Adjei, 2013). Culture, in this view, is not fixed but considered
as patterns of representations or actions that are distributed by and con-
structed through social interactions (see Kitayama & Cohen, 2007). Central
to discursive psychology is the concept of interpretative repertoire, that is,
terminologies, stylistics and grammatical features, preferred metaphors and
figures of speech, and general commonsensical ways used by members of a
given community to characterize and evaluate actions (Potter & Wetherell,
1987). Discursive psychology also emphasizes the dialectic relationship in
which social realities and subjectivities are constituted historically, politically,
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and socially at a macro level (Wetherell & Potter, 1992). Talk about a social
issue such as battered women’s entrapment is organized as social action in its
immediate context, and around culturally familiar interpretive resources that
reveal the shared meaning-making processes of participants within a given
broader social and historical context (see Edley & Wetherell, 2001). The
signature feature of discourse analysis is its flexibility and reflexivity, where
historical and sociocultural experiences of both researchers and participants
shape and direct data interpretation and analysis (Adjei, 2013).
Study location and participants
The rural sites for this study were in the Ashanti region while the urban sites
were suburbs in Kumasi (Ashanti region) and the capital Accra (the greater
Accra region) of Ghana. The total number of participants was 32 adults
comprising 16 perpetrators (men) and 16 victims (women). The age of
participants ranged from 24 to 60, with between four to 22 years of marriage.
The majority of participants (n= 25) were Akans (the largest ethnic group in
Ghana), and the remaining were Ewes (n= 2), Ga-Adangbe (n= 1),
Dagomba (n= 1), and unknown (n= 3). Over 81% of the participants
were Christians (n= 26), and the rest were Muslims (n= 4) and unknown
(n= 2). The participants were mostly farmers (n= 11); and the rest were
petty traders (n= 7), commercial drivers (n= 6), hairdressers (n= 4), and
teachers (n= 4). While Accra and Kumasi, the urban sites, are characterized
by heterogeneity, weakened family bond, and traditional values due mainly to
urbanization and social change (Nukunya, 2003), the rural areas of Ghana
largely consist of indigenous homogenous ethnic groups with deeply
entrenched traditional norms and values.
Design and procedure
The data for the present study was obtained through semi-structured focus
group discussions (FGDs) and in-depth individual interviews conducted with
32 participants in Ghana over a period of 7 months, beginning from January
to July 2014. Participants were sampled through home and community visits,
contact with the DOVVSU, and other snowballing contacts. The purpose of
the study was introduced to officials of DOVVSU and community/opinion
leaders who usually settle cases of spousal violence. They, in turn, assisted in
identifying potential participants to seek their consent. Additional recruit-
ments were made through snowballing contacts provided by recruited parti-
cipants. The DOVVSU, created by an Act of Parliament (Act 732) in 2007, is
a specialized unit of the Ghana Police Service responsible for preventing
crimes against women and children, and to particularly provide them with
protection from domestic violence. Contact with the DOVVSU and
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community/opinion leaders 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 and
they were informed that their participation and/or answering of questions
was voluntary. The inclusion criteria were women with (self-reported)
experiences of physical and/or sexual abuse from a current or past marital
partner and men who had inflicted physical and/or sexual abuse on a current
or past partner. These criteria were considered relevant because, regardless of
how one explains violence in intimate relationships, the perspectives one
offers may remain irrelevant to those who experience it (DeKeresdy &
MacLeod, 1997).
A semi-structured interview guide was used for both the focus group
and personal interviews, which included topics such as participants’
description of themselves and their marriage; their general views about
husband-to-wife abuse; whether or not spousal violence was normal; abuse
and divorce; help-seeking; and family interventions. A total of four FGDs
were held, two each for rural and urban victims and perpetrators; six all
perpetrators (men) group and six all victims (women) group in each case.
Single sex FGD allows discussants to share their views honestly without
any inhibition from members of the group (Ellsberg & Heise, 2005).
Putting males and females in a mixed group in a hierarchical society of
Ghana would hinder women from freely expressing their views—they may
have been overshadowed by their male counterparts because of power
imbalances (Adjei, 2012). Eight additional in-depth personal interviews
were conducted with victims and perpetrators (different from FGD parti-
cipants) from rural and urban settings to help triangulate issues and
patterns. In order not to compromise the safety of victims, only one
member was selected from the same marriage/household (either the hus-
band or the wife) as a participant in the study.
For purposes of confidentiality, analysis, and reporting, codes were
adopted for FGD participants to reflect their status, interview site, and
ordinal position. For example, RV1 and UV1 represented rural victim num-
ber one and urban victim number one, respectively. Interviews were con-
ducted in Twi, the most widely spoken Ghanaian language belonging to the
Akans. The use of Twi created a relative power balance between the
researcher (a native speaker of Twi) and the participants on one hand, and
among participants on another. All FGDs lasted between 45 and 60 minutes
while individual interviews lasted between 25 and 35 minutes. Interviews
were held at convenient locations selected by participants, audio-recorded
with the consent of participants, and later transcribed into English by the
researcher. Interview transcription emphasized readability rather than details
of Jeffersonian notation that indicates pitch, prosody, timing, and pauses
(LeCourteur & Oxlad, 2011).
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Data analysis
The analysis of data in the present study focused on the ‘action orientation
of talk’(Edwards & Potter, 1992), that is, attention was paid to how a
participant deployed discursive resources to achieve certain effects. The
author carefully and iteratively listened to recordings (in Twi) with inter-
mittent back and forth movement to obtain clarity and familiarity with the
data. The greater part of the interviews was then translated and transcribed
from Twi into English for purposes of conceptual formulations and
reporting. However, the author stayed in the source language (Twi) as
long and as much as possible through repeated listening of audio record-
ings to avoid potential meaning losses and translation limitations.
Transcripts were imported into NVivo 10 for inclusive coding; that is,
searching and grouping of extracts related to the overall focus of the study
(Potter, 2003). Different words or phrases that were repeatedly used and
pointed to the regularity and patterns of participants’discursive orienta-
tion were assigned to data chunk. Such groups included participants’
construction of their agency in negotiating stay/leave decisions, cultural
framing of husband-to-wife abuse, family intervention and support, help-
seeking behavior, social norms about marriage and divorce, and gender
identity discourses, among others.
The selection of extracts for analysis then became focused based on the
context of what was said, how participants said it (e.g., their choice of
words), and why they may have said it. In line with the purpose of the
study, the assembled discursive patterns were further pruned down and/or
merged. The emerged discursive patterns and concepts were then formu-
lated and interpreted in view of participants’contextual features, such as
history, values, beliefs, and culture. Selected extracts and the author’s
interpretations of them were presented to two other research colleagues
to engage with and subject the data to thorough and careful evaluations in
relation to the overall aim of the study. Discussions from meetings the
author had with them provided valuable insights and credibility to the
analytical processes of data as it helped in developing intersubjective
consensus on both selected data and its interpretations. Beyond partici-
pants’immediate discursive practices and negotiation of meaning in the
interviews, the analysis also attended to the broader social and institutional
contexts of gender relations and marriage in Ghana, as well as commun-
alist orientations and social-positioning that shapes participants’discursive
deployments. Examples of extracts from interview transcripts alongside
interpretations that have been made of them are presented below. These
examples were chosen because they provide clear and inclusive illustra-
tions of the major ways in which participants talked about battered
women’s entrapment (see Walker & Goodman, 2015).
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Findings
Discursive accounts of participants revealed three main psychosocial and
cultural factors as influencing battered women’s decision to stay in or leave
abusive marital relationships in Ghana: (1) social stigma of divorce, (2)
remarriage possibilities and post-divorce child maintenance, and (3) washing
dirty linen in public: Cultural framing of marital abuse as private.
Social stigma of divorce
Accounts of participants associated battered women’s anxiety over post-
divorce social stigma with their entrapment in abusive marriage in
Ghana. Participants positioned divorce as a social anathema to both
women and their lineage/family of orientation (i.e., ‘abusua’)inGhana.
For example,
I am not happy with him; I always live in fear so how can I be happy in this
relationship. I still live with him because when you are divorced in this commu-
nity, people will talk about you; people will discuss you and cast insinuations to
suggest that you have a bad character that’s why your husband has divorced you.
(Rural victim, personal communication)
The victim in the quote above expresses her ‘double fear’—the fear of
abuse and the fear of divorce-induced community “insinuations”and con-
demnation. However, the greater fear, it seems, is her fear of divorce and the
extent of social humiliation that divorced women must bear in the Ghanaian
community. It appears that rather than a result of husband-perpetrated
abuse, society generally interprets divorce as a consequence of a woman’s
(divorcee’s) poor moral integrity and character flaws; ostensibly extricating
perpetrators from their abusive behavior. The quote highlights victims’
enduring attention to the self as object of other people’s attention and social
evaluative scrutiny. Despite their fears of abuse, it appears that the shame and
embarrassment that battered women often feel about the insinuations of
social others prevents them from leaving their abusive partners. As is evident
in the quote above, the victim’s aversion to divorce is linked with her
objective awareness of relational others and the unpleasant interpersonal
social evaluations that divorcees are likely to receive from society. Thus, it
seems that victims of spousal abuse adjust their own behavior and continue
to stay in abusive relationships to avoid stigmatization. The quote further
indicates the heavy social, cultural, and moral obligations of women in
Ghana to keep their marital relationships as their self-esteem and social
image seem to be intricately associated with their ability to keep their
marriages.
Participants’discourses also suggested that women are more likely than
men to be blamed for divorce in Ghana.
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It is difficult to be divorced in this community. You always become the talk of
town and people say all manner of things about you. Nobody will say I left because
my husband abused me. They will insinuate and laugh at me …maybe he will
change. (Urban victim, personal communication)
It is suggested in the quote that people may impugn ill motives and “say all
manner of things”including insinuations bothering on divorcees’moral
standing in society. It is emphasized that stay/leave decisions of battered
women in Ghana rest on what personal choice of action might mean to
women’s public self-image in the community. To escape this staggering
burden of ‘integrity scrutinization’and its concomitant social insinuations
and mockery, abused women may feel psychologically pressured to continue
to stay in unsatisfactory marital relationships. The awareness of real or
imagined social audience and human watchers heightens the public reputa-
tional concerns of victims of abuse and influences them to stay as they adjust
their behavior to suit the family and social audience. It can thus be said that
the decision by victims of spousal abuse to remain in abusive marital
relationship in Ghana may be an adaptive response to their intense public
self-image and fear of post-divorce stigmatization.
Discursive accounts of participants also associated divorce with family
dishonor and collective embarrassment. For instance, in a focus group inter-
view, one victim indicated that:
I reported my husband to the police but my family advised me to withdraw the
case. They reminded me that two of my relatives were divorced by their husbands
and so it is not a good thing for me to add to the number because it will tarnish the
image of the family. (Urban victim 5, FGD)
The discourse above clearly evinces a familial preference for amicable
settlement of marital dispute to divorce, as the family perceives divorce to
be potentially discrediting to family prestige and honor. It is further implied
in the quote that the more divorce a family records, the more tainted the
family image appears in the eyes of social others. It is thus suggested that
families with a history of divorce may suffer collateral social damage as future
suitors might not want to choose from the family. These discursive accounts
emphasize the social and historical significance of the extended family in
Ghana and its apparent precedence over individual rights and choices. It
further emphasizes the fact that, in the communal morality of Ghana, the
ethics of responsibility towards the family is placed high and above ethics of
individual rights. Apparently, compared with individual happiness and free-
dom, the greater call and moral responsibility for most women in the
Ghanaian society may be to preserve and protect the social order and the
family image. As can be seen in the quote above, family image and identity
appears to be deemed tarnished through acts of divorce or unsuccessful
marriage of women than through acts of spousal violence. These discursive
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deployments provide evidence for emphasis on the influence of the extended
family in the marital life of women in Ghana with a subordinated emphasis
on the self and personal choice.
Opportunity for remarriage and post-divorce child maintenance
Participants constructed possibilities for remarriage as one of the key socio-
cultural factors that influence stay/leave decisions of battered women. There
appears to be a relationship between divorce stigma and remarriage possibi-
lities as recounted by participants.
I didn’t report him earlier because I was afraid no one will marry me if he ended
the relationship […] I am doing it now because I cannot bear the violence any
more. Even if I don’t get another man because I am a divorcee, I will prefer that to
the current unhappiness in my marriage. (Urban victim, personal communication)
As can be seen in the quote, divorce-associated stigma has a carry-over
effect for divorced women in the Ghanaian community. The victim suggests
that divorce, apart from its associated social and psychological cost, also
makes future remarriage alternatives unappealing and possibly unavailable
for women. Thus, the decision of victims of partner abuse to remain in their
abusive marital relationship in Ghana may be a function of perceived unap-
pealing post-divorce remarriage choices that result from the stigmatization of
divorcees.
Participants also constructed post-divorce child maintenance as another
structural factor that constrains victims of spousal abuse in Ghana from
fleeing violent marital relationships.
It’s not about happiness my brother (directed at researcher). It is more about
where I will go with my four children and who will take care of them. Yes, I can
leave today but I must equally be prepared to take care of the children because he
will not do it. (Rural victim 3, FGD)
Although the victim acknowledges and constructs the abusive behavior of
her husband as negative and unjustifiable, she feels stuck and helpless
because of her children. She suggests that the husband may refuse to
shoulder any responsibility for the children if she terminates the relationship.
Her fear appears consistent with a common belief in most communities in
Ghana that suggests that if a woman initiates divorce proceedings and
subsequently quits her marriage, and there are children born into the wed-
lock, the divorced men may derelict all parental responsibilities and abandon
the children. Apparently, fathers may neglect their parental duties as a form
of angry protest against the decision of women who by themselves initiate
and leave unsatisfactory relationships. Some fathers too may refuse to stay
with the children, even if they are old enough, in order to make the
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divorcee’s remarriage opportunities slim and unappealing. It thus seems that
battered women’s anxiety over the unknown future for their children appears
to be informed by the experiences of divorcees in the Ghanaian community.
Apparently, the more children a victim has with a perpetrator, the less likely
the perpetrator would worry about a victim’s decision to end the relationship.
As one perpetrator indicated; “she can quit for all I care […] after all who
in this village will marry a divorcee with five children”(Rural perpetrator 2,
FGD). Rather than worry about his violent behavior, the perpetrator seems
unperturbed, apparently due to the belief that “no person will marry a
divorcee with five children.”This belief may embolden and motivate perpe-
trators to persist in their violent actions without fear of losing their partners.
It can be argued that the more children a woman has, from a current or past
relationship, the less likely it is for her to find another man to remarry after
divorce, and the more likely she may be compelled to continue with the
abusive relationship.
Washing a dirty linen in public: Cultural framing of marital abuse as
private
Contrary to the communal value system in Ghana, participants positioned
marital abuse as a “private matter,”which cannot be shared by all. The
accounts revealed that when abuse occurs, it is culturally framed and gen-
erally regarded as belonging to the private realm of the two people involved
in the relationship dyad.
Sometimes I had to hide my bruises from my friends and the public or give excuses
if I can’t hide them because I did not want people to know what was happening in
my marriage. That is not the best thing for a woman to do; reporting every single
case in your marriage to others […] there is problem with every marriage. I would
rather tell my family. (Rural victim, personal communication)
Experience of marital abuse is culturally positioned and represented in the
above quote as restricted to the private sphere of individuals involved, and
perhaps their families (“I would rather tell my family”). The unwritten socio-
cultural norm or the moral rule of “privacy of marital issues”in Ghana is very
pervasive, to the extent that when physical abuse occurs, victims prefer to use
excuses of personal responsibility for bruises and wounds. As pointed out
above, victims may feel uncomfortable publicly talking about their painful
ordeals in marriage “to others.”They would rather adjust their own behavior
to conform to norms of marriage than to report abuse to others or seek
external or professional assistance outside the extended family. The sanctity
and precedence of collective ethics (ethics of extended family and social
others) over individual rights and privileges preclude women from seeking
help outside the immediate nexus of the extended family. For example:
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That is very true […] the media only report when someone is killed or when a
woman cheats on her husband. If a woman cheats on her husband, then everybody
will talk about it and say it is bad and all that […] Even if you complain, people
will tell you that you don’t have to wash your dirty linen in public; marital matters
must remain in the bedroom and so many things. (Rural victim 6, FGD)
The quote emphasizes the depth of the norm of “privacy”by pointing out
the selective treatment of marital issues by the Ghanaian media and the
public. The victim appears to stress that besides death or a woman’s adulter-
ous conduct, other issues in marriage, including marital abuse, are not
treated as urgent by the media because it is regarded as a private matter.
The victim’s account further implies that the unpleasant (“dirty linen”)
aspects of marriage, including wife abuse, should not be brought to or
“washed in”the full glare of the public because of its potential to damage
the identity and social image of the actors involved (man, wife, and extended
family) and the marriage institution in general. For this reason, victims may
be psychologically motivated to keep incidents of abuse, especially sexual
abuse, to themselves; avoid “complaining”or seeking public help (including
reporting to the police); and suffer from suppressed emotional pain alone—
all to escape social stigma. It appears that many victims tolerate and remain
in abusive conjugal relationships and do not publicly report even particularly
disturbing instances of abuse because of the perception that spousal conflicts
are “private”in the Ghanaian communal ethos.
However, some participants indicated that the cultural norm of “privacy of
marriage”can be both accepted and contested by victims of spousal abuse in
Ghana, as exemplified by the following account:
My view is that men should stop abusing us because if they continue to do that we
will also report them. I know it is not the best thing to do and people might say
that I am discussing marital issues in public or reporting my own husband but I
will not let my husband kill me because of a marriage. No I will not sit down at all.
(Urban victim 4, FGD)
The above response suggests how individual victims can defy and resist
beliefs imposed by society. The victim demonstrates that despite the embedd-
edness of collective meaning systems, personal meaning processes of indivi-
dual victims can be employed to reassert personal control of life and shape
experiences in marriage in Ghana. Nonetheless, in the light of the discourse,
“I know it is not the best thing to do and people might say that I am
discussing marital issues in public or reporting my own husband,”the victim
effectively highlights how her resistance to norms of “marital privacy”may
incite public condemnation and stigmatization. It is evident that when the
collective norm of privacy must be subordinated to personal choice and
action, it could create social fracture and even personal discomfort. Thus,
her anticipation of negative social evaluations and criticism illustrates the
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social cost of publicly reporting marital abuse in Ghana. To ensure the
smooth running of the social order, victims of spousal abuse in Ghana may
be culturally expected to sacrifice their agency, the belief in the self and the
power to change the course of history, and individuality on the altar of
tradition and norms of marriage. This “privatized”norm of marital abuse
may psychologically influence victims to remain in abusive relationships and
enable perpetrators to escape critical social scrutiny and legal punishment.
Discussion
In this article, the author explored social and cultural groundings of stay/
leave decisions of victims of spousal abuse in Ghana. Discursive accounts of
participants in the study have shown that post-divorce social stigma, remar-
riage alternatives, and post-divorce child care, as well as privacy framing of
marital abuse function in concert to influence battered women’s decision to
stay in or leave violent marital relationships. As a social construction, stigma
is determined by dominant cultural discourses (Mill, Edwards, Jackson,
MacLean, & Chaw-Kant, 2010), which attribute damaging labels to persons
who are perceived to have failed to uphold prevailing social norms and
expectations in a given social context (Eckstein, 2016). Experience of post-
divorce stigmatization in Ghana is socially driven such that acceptance of
divorcees into society and groups (e.g., church) may be socially demeaned
(Asante, Osafo, & Nyamekye, 2014). Consistent with the communal ontology
of personhood, victims of spousal abuse in Ghana appear to have intense
anxiety and dysphoria about post-divorce negative social evaluation and
public humiliation. They tend to be more concerned about others approval
because of the logic that a person’s identity and self-worth is socially con-
ferred or denied (see Adjei, 2016). As previous studies point out, the stigma
associated with battered women has a powerful influence on their sense of
selves, their sense of their own power, and, ultimately, on their behavioral
choices (Semaan, 2004).
Post-divorce stigma in Ghana can be so extreme that divorcees may feel
regretful for having initiated and divorced their husbands (Asante et al.,
2014). The social stigma of divorce in Ghana may be particularly influential
in battered women’s stay/leave actions because people in Ghana generally
have a more enduring attention to the self as an object of other people’s
attention and social evaluative scrutiny (see Adams, 2005). Similarly, research
in an interdependent society of Hong Kong observed that abused women
continued to stay in abusive relationships to avoid being looked down upon
or socially stigmatized by others in society (Loke et al., 2012). The thought of
divorce as a potential act that could incite community evaluation and con-
demnation appears to keep abused women in violent conjugal relationships
in Ghana. Given the fact that stigma potentially threatens the identity, social
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status, general psychological well-being, and physical health of the stigma-
tized (Eckstein, 2016; Major & O’Brien, 2005), it seems reasonable that
victims of spousal violence in Ghana and elsewhere (see Loke et al., 2012)
will stay in abusive relationships for fear of post-divorce communal censure
and social stigma.
It has also been shown that battered women may stay in abusive marriages
to protect the image of their family against divorce-related social stigma.
Family stigma is considered a social injury in Ghana and potentially dama-
ging to the social reputation of a family (Osafo, Hjelmeland, Akotia, &
Knizek, 2011), including endangering the chances and expectations of both
men and women in the affected family for marriage (Adinkrah, 2008). The
family in sub-Saharan Africa is regarded to be prior to every individual in the
community and a woman’s status is a derivative one—her identity and status
are defined by and inseparably connected to her family (Bowman, 2003). In
much the same way as individual victims, the family also has a sense of
public self-consciousness because it is a unit of societal attention and evalua-
tion. In this view, the family and individual victims might prefer the lesser of
two evils; they might prefer the evil of individual psychological and physical
pain of abuse to save the family from the collective pain of divorce-motivated
social stigma. For example, research reports in Ghana indicate that even
when victims of abuse attempt to circumvent the traditional system by
reporting IPV cases to the criminal justice system, the family and elders of
the community often sought to withdraw these cases on their own initiative,
with or without the victim’s consent (Cantalupo, Martin, Pak, & Shin, 2006).
Divorce-motivated stigma may induce fear, depression, and unhappiness,
and apparently influence the decision of victims to stay in violent conjugal
unions in Ghana. Divorce in Ghana is culturally frowned upon by individuals
and families (Adinkrah, 2008), and any action on the part of a victim that
may necessitate divorce could be equally detestable. Apparently, the public
self-consciousness of victims and their desire to avoid the social stigma
attached by the Ghanaian society to divorce (and to guard the self and
their family against public evaluative scrutiny in Ghana) serves as a potential
restraint to fleeing abusive marital unions.
The study further showed that post-divorce stigma has a knock-on effect
on battered women’s remarriage alternatives and possibilities. Discursive
accounts of participants suggest that remarriage opportunities for divorced
women may be blurred due to the stigma associated with divorce in the
Ghanaian society. In addition to the norm that divorce is generally frowned
upon; remarriage in Ghana is more common for men than for divorced
women (Adinkrah, 2008). Consequently, battered women’s stay/leave actions
may be influenced by whether there are attractive post-divorce remarriage
alternatives to them. The current finding meshes well with the social psy-
chological proposition that availability and attractiveness of post-divorce
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alternatives shapes the decision to remain or leave abusive relationships
(Rusbult & Martz, 1995). If a victim of husband-perpetrated abuse has no
better alternative, it is understandable that she might feel motivated to
remain in an even very unsatisfactory relationship (Langley & Levy, 1977).
Another related structural factor that influences battered women’s
stay/leave decisions is post-divorce child maintenance. The tendency
for divorced men in Ghana to neglect their parental responsibilities
toward their children upon divorce is well documented (UNICEF-
Ghana, 2000). Both legal and anecdotal evidence suggest that fathers in
Ghana generally refuse outright to meet their responsibilities toward
their children after divorce particularly if custody arrangements upon
divorce fail to give custody of children below a certain age to the father
(Britwum et al., 2004). Though unhappy, the post-divorce behavior of
fathers in Ghana regarding child neglect may occupy the consciousness
of victims of spousal abuse and thus influence their decision to remain
in an unsatisfactory marital relationship. In her pioneering study in
Ghana, Ofei-Aboagye (1994) pointed out that, although some women
who had suffered husband-perpetrated abuse acknowledged that the
physical abuse was serious enough to warrant some action against the
perpetrators (such as leaving them), the victims reported that they had
never contemplated taking any such measures because they either did
not want their children to have different fathers or they would not have
the wherewithal to keep the children in the comfort to which they were
accustomed. In their recent study, Asante and colleagues (2014)
observed that motherhood state in Ghana may serve as a strong demo-
tivator for initiating divorce, to the extent that mothers who divorced
their partners were stigmatized and labeled as insensitive to the plight of
the children born into the wedlock. This is consistent with Rusbult and
Martz’s(1995) theorization that the size of investment (e.g., number of
children) in a relationship could be a significant mediating factor in the
leave or stay calculus of victims of partner aggression. A more recent
study in Hong Kong also revealed that abused women remained trapped
in abusive relationships and endured intimate partner violence for the
sake of family completeness and their children (Loke et al., 2012).
While the communal values of sharing, mutual aid, caring for others,
interdependence, solidarity, reciprocal obligation, and social harmony
remain fundamental and mostly privileged cultural value in the Ghanaian
society, discursive accounts of participants in the current study revealed that
the same cannot be said of marital conflicts in Ghana. There is a culturally
assumed ethos in Ghana that suggests that marital conflicts, including serious
abuse, should not be brought to public scrutiny. The negative implication is
that many women tolerate and remain in abusive relationships and do not
complain publicly about their ordeals because of the culturally given
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‘privatization’of spousal/marital conflicts in the Ghanaian society. As
Eckstein (2009) points out, victims of IPV internalize relational norms that
judge them under the assumption that they should remain silent about their
ordeal and stay in their relationship.
The view of marital issues as belonging to the private sphere of partners
was mainly responsible for why the marital rape clause in the Domestic
Violence Bill (passed into law in 2007, DV Act 732) was strongly rejected
by both men and women in Ghana (Hodžić,2009; Stafford, 2008). Prior to
the passage of the bill, prominent personalities in Ghana, including presi-
dential candidates and legal luminaries strongly held the view that the marital
rape clause was a foreign imposition and an unnecessary intrusion into the
privacy of married couples (Ansa-Ansare, 2003). For instance, Dr. Edward
Mahama, a medical practitioner and the then presidential candidate of the
Peoples’National Convention (PNC) party is quoted to have said that: “if we
talk about marital rape, it means we are going into the bedroom, and we have
no right to go there …you cannot legislate on such issues”(Stafford, 2008,
p. 63, emphasis added). Within the wider polemics, cultural sovereignty
prevailed over legal activism and the marital rape clause was eventually
expunged from the drafted DV bill. The culture of ‘private sphere’in
marriage is so rooted in the Ghanaian social fabric that even when abuse
cases are reported to appropriate authorities, details of abuse, particularly
sexual abuse, become sketchy and inaccessible to law enforcement agencies
(Adjei, 2012). This is consistent with other studies that indicate that some
abused women consider family violence as a private matter and feel ashamed
to talk about it in public (Loke et al., 2012).
The private sphere of marriage may include the extended family, the
preferred avenue for addressing marital conflicts rather than discussing
them with “strangers”or on the public arena of the courts or the police.
The cultural framing of marital abuse as belonging to the private sphere of
individuals appears to contrast the communal value of sharing and solidarity
and the view that marriage in Ghana is a group affair. Theoretically, it may
also be at odds with the depersonalized view of the self—communal ontology
of personhood—where the self shifts from personal (private) to the collective
(the extended family). However, in practice, the private sphere expressed by
participants in the study may not necessarily preclude the family. The family,
the established template against which the individual derives and articulates a
personal identity, may be implicit in the privacy positioning of participants.
In many instances, victims may prefer reporting spousal violence to the
immediate family members because of the belief that private disputes invol-
ving a husband and a wife is best adjudicated by traditional authorities rather
than the formal civil courts. In other words, discourses of privacy could also
mean that marital conflicts belong to the parties involved in the marriage as
well as their respective extended families. This is consistent with the view that
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marriage in Ghana is a group affair; it does not involve individuals but
families. Understood this way, the family is thus positioned in the discourses
of victims as an extension of the individual self, which specifies values, goals,
and norms of marital life and guides the individual’s interface with the
surrounding world. The social cost of discussing marital conflicts in public
in Ghana seems very high in the society.
Implications for research and practice
Although individualized and victim-based intervention strategies, such as
psychotherapy and social counseling at the DOVVSU and social welfare
departments are important, such counseling services should involve members
of the extended families of both victims and perpetrators. The DOVVSU
department should work collectively with families, religious and traditional
leaders to develop useful guidelines on how to help victims of IPV in Ghana.
Healthcare professionals in Ghana should also be trained and encouraged to
identify and help victims of IPV. There is also a need for sustained, pre-
ventive-focused, and community-based education that empowers churches,
mosques, educators, and opinion leaders to openly and expressly condemn
spousal violence and help foster an awareness of its destructive consequences
on individuals, families, and society.
Given the evidence for battered women’s emphasis on externality of self-
positioning, where the extended family is highlighted over and above the
individual self and choices, future research on IPV should extend its focus on
battered women’s personal agentive actions to include ways in which socio-
cultural conditions and structural forces constrain victims of IPV from
fleeing abuse. For example, instead of asking why victims stay in abusive
relationships, implying victims’failure to act on their own behalf, future
studies should rather ask what cultural and familial factors constrain victims
from leaving violent relationships particularly in interdependent societies.
Future studies could also extend its focus to include the views of non-victims
and non-perpetrators to have a more holistic picture of the contextual factors
that influence stay/leave decisions of battered women in Ghana.
Conclusion
This study has shown that the decision to stay in or leave an abusive marital
relationship in Ghana appears to be socioculturally and structurally
grounded. The concern for what social others might say or think of divorced
women lead individual victims to the most basic question: what will the
choice of my action (ending the relationship) mean to my identity as a
woman in Ghana (public self-image) and my family? The social pain that
results from divorce stigmatization seems to be a staggering burden
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confronting victims of spousal abuse in the Ghanaian community and may
serve as a social barrier to relationship termination. Also, post-divorce
remarriage opportunities and child maintenance, and the cultural framing
of marital conflicts as belonging to the private sphere have powerful influ-
ence on battered women’s sense of selves and their action potentials. To
understand and explain the highly complex nature of spousal violence, we
must seek the origin of battered women’s entrapment in abusive marital
relationships in the external conditions of life, and in the sociocultural and
structural forms of human existence.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank all participants who spent their time talking about their
personal and difficult experiences of spousal violence.
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