?To Be an African Working Woman?: Levels of Feminist Consciousness in Ama Ata Aidoo'sChanges

Abstract

ith this disturbing scene of marital rape occurring the opening pages of her 1991 novel C h a n g e s , Ama Ata Aidoo introduces her reader to some of the major issues she takes on the work. Yet her pre f a t o ry confession, Aidoo apologizes for having written C h a n g e s , which she claims is about lovers Accra. Because sure l she explains, in our environment there are more important things to write about? And while the subtitle of Changes is simply A Love Story, such a description fails to adequately suggest the riches of this recent work by the Ghanaian writer. Other themes Aidoo discusses include working women's double shift, p o l y g y n y, the visibility of single women urban environments, education, and the lack of significant change contemporary women's circ u m- stances. An African feminist, Aidoo grounds her discussion of these issues fully the African context. Thus, whereas We s t e rn feminism tends to focus on working women chafing under the glass ceiling, Aidoo presents us with the more concrete reality of African women's limiting factors, an u n a d o rned portrayal of the complex web of frustration making up the e v e ryday lives of contemporary West African women. Among these exacer- bating factors are the traditional social expectations of women's roles as wives and mothers first, with an outside job only if necessary to support the f a m i l y. More o v e r, the traditional division of labor within the household allo- cates the bulk of the chores to women, thus placing extreme time con- straints on working women. Wife-beating, euphemistically re f e rred to as c o rrection, is still seen as a husband's right, to be exercised should a woman fail to perf o rm to expectations. 2 Most women work because a single income is insufficient to support their household. While their economic contribution to the household is often vital to the well-being of their fami- lies, few women are formally employed, and most work service industries.