Development and Women's Reproductive Health in Ghana, 1920-1982

This book investigates the history of women’s reproductive health in Ghana,

arguing that between the 1920s and 1980s, it was largely driven by discourses of

development and population control rather than a concern for women’s health or

rights.

Between the 1920s and 1980s, the choices that Ghanaian women made

regarding their reproductive health were defined by development policy and

practice. Spanning the colonial and immediate postcolonial periods, this book

demonstrates that whilst the substance of development discourse shifted over

time, principles of development continued to be used to impact and legitimise

reproductive health policy and practices well after independence. The book

explores Ghana’s pluralist health system, the introduction of maternal and child

welfare, the dominance of the Red Cross in Ghana’s maternal and child health

landscape, nationalist pronatalism and global population activism. In order to

understand how global iterations of development and health policy impacted

ordinary lives in Ghana, the author uses evidence from multiple ‘levels,’ including

private papers, national archives and records of international and transnational

organisations. Providing balanced archival perspectives, the book includes

extensive oral history interviews carried out with both rural Ghanaian women and

traditional birth attendants, as well as with midwives, doctors and family planning

fieldworkers.

This book will have an important impact on a number of historical fields

including Ghanaian history, global health history, global histories of population

and family planning and histories of development. It will be of interest to

researchers and students in the history of public health, development, Africa,

Ghana and gender.

Holly Ashford completed her PhD in History at Cambridge University, UK.