Negotiating Gender Roles and Power Relations Through the Management of International Migrant Remittances in a Patriarchal Community in Ghana

Abstract

This paper draws on a feminist poststructural perspective to examine gendered dimensions of sending and managing international migrant remittances in a patriarchal community in Ghana. It relies on primary data collected through in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and observation in Nkoranza, a Ghanaian community with a long history of international migration and receipt of remittances, to analyze the fluidity of gendered and intergenerational power relationships associated with managing remittances. The findings show that males and females perform different roles as remitters and managers of remittances. While the patterns of sending and receiving remittances tend to conform to gender norms, which construct men as providers and women as carers, these subject positions are fluid. Although men are generally reluctant to perform traditional female roles even when their wives migrate, gendered and intergenerational power relations are being negotiated through the sending and management of remittances.