Women in Local Governance

How do women leaders adapt to changing global trends to remain active at the local levels? The book answers this question by uniting several strands of cultural inquiries that are linked to current trends of globalisation, democratisation and gender and feminist discourses. It assesses the intersectionality between tradition and modernity by placing women leaders (queen mothers, cult leaders, family heads) as active agents in human security. Thus, Thompson Gyedu Kwarkye postulates an approach dubbed feminist securitization that emphasises how women leaders are adapting to changing global trends to remain active at the local levels. The approach also answers key conceptual questions related to women's leadership in a patriarchal system. The research also explores colonial and decolonial discourses among Nawuri women leaders beginning in the seventeenth century. For Nawuri women leaders, colonialism came in many folds. First, in a form of racial subordination between the colonial government and the natives. Second, women leaders suffered from the segregation of highly centralised institutions and the segmented Nawuri. Third, it came through divisions based on gender that were apparent among Nawuri men and women. However, after 1957 women leaders became a pivot in local governance.