Paper Short Abstract:

This paper explores how Ghanaian women in Germany who do not meet the culturally acceptable standards of successful womanhood leverage their migration to re-invent and re-position themselves as financial advisors, entrepreneurs, matchmakers, and community leaders.

Paper Abstract:

Globalisation, education, and migration have played a role in changing attitudes towards socially and culturally prescribed gender roles and norms. In West Africa, a woman’s success is often heavily influenced by her ability to conform to the expected cultural norms of her society. Migration, therefore, offers an opportunity for migrants to discard cultural values and norms from the origin society that no longer serve them while preserving those that do. In addition, for women, migration, especially migration to the Global North, provides economic opportunities as well as social and legal protections that allow them to secure their positions, gain status and garner influence both within the migrant community and in their communities of origin.

This paper explores the ways migrant women from Ghana living in Germany leverage their migration to change attitudes and perceptions of their ‘failures” in order to create new pathways of gaining respect and influence. In particular the paper focuses on divorced women, single mothers, and women in unconventional or “non-traditional relationships”. These women who would otherwise be viewed as having failed to meet the socially accepted standard of womanhood (marriage and children within the boundaries of marriage) have instead used their access to social and economic resources in Germany to “re-invent and re-position” themselves in new arenas as financial advisors, entrepreneurs, matchmakers and community leaders primarily to other women in Ghana, Germany and the diaspora in order to help these women to become upwardly mobile themselves.