Fashioning the Nation: Hairdressing, Professionalism and the Performance of Gender in Ghana, 1900-2006.

Abstract

This dissertation examines hairdressing as a gendered domestic activity during which girls acquired education from their peers and adult women, and how members of societies provided, discussed and promoted hairdressings as status symbols, symbols of a person’s stage in life, fashion and a new profession in twentieth century Ghana. During the British colonial era, the processes of dressing and maintaining hair in urban areas provided avenues for the colonized people to express their consistent as well as changing needs. African intellectuals and people of African descent turned to artistic creativity that unified them as pan-Africanists. From the 1950s, the Gold Coast was renamed Ghana as a sign of “African Nationalism” and Ghanaians performed “African pride” and national culture through dress and the promotion of the Arts that utilized visual and aural senses for entertainment, information and education. The media played a central role in shaping readers minds about dress, beauty and the roles of school-educated women in transforming their communities, and featured the workplace of hairdressers as a space of desire based on gendered ideas about family, nationhood and international skill training. However, during the 1970s and 1980s, public evidence of the importance of hairdressing dwindled as Ghanaians experienced a crisis of nationalism due to the Cold War and economic malaise. Ghana sought loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and implemented their Structural Adjustment measures. From the 1990s, women who work in the informal economy took advantage of concepts such as “World Heritage site” and “Structural Adjustment.” Women in Elmina advertised cultural ntakua headgears for companies and organizations, both local and foreign. Commercial hairdressers sought skill-training and certificates to provide hairdressing. They formed professional associations and with the guidance of the Industrial Commercial Unit of the Trades Union Congress and negotiated successfully with the appropriate government institutions for new tax rates, utility rates, and a hairdressing syllabus. Consistently, hair serves as a gender based symbol that is combed, braided or straightened into new styles to depict the varied ideas and ideals of Ghanaians and those with whom they interact.