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Researching dressmaking in Ghana: welcome Juliet Tiwaah Adu Boahen in the Womatwork project!

Hello everyone!

I am Juliet Tiwaah Adu Boahen, a young historian from Ghana who takes an interest in women and children’s health and educational history, from colonial and early post-colonial Ghana. I obtained my bachelor’s degree from the University of Education, Winneba, Ghana, in 2017, where I studied History with Geography Education. In 2020, I obtained a Master of Philosophy in History Education from the University of Education, Winneba, a joint program with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. My MPhil thesis title was “Malnutrition, Maternal and Infant Mortality and the Making of Domesticity in Gold Coast and Ghana, 1920-1966”. There I examined how the colonial governments in the Gold Coast envisaged the teaching of Domestic Science in schools and its incorporation into the school curriculum would help control malnutrition. With this, I identified the colonial and the first post-colonial government’s health and educational measures used to prevent malnutrition and how these measures unintendedly, made the home a place for mothers and women. Thanks to my master’s thesis research I published in 2023 the essay ‘Female Education and Domesticity in the Gold Coast and Ghana, 1920-1966′ in the book “Education in Ghana: History and Politics” published by Langaa Research & Publishing CIG, Bamenda.

Being passionate about teaching history and my desire to gain additional knowledge and skills in the writing and teaching of African history, I was motivated to pursue a PhD. I developed an interest in the Wom@work project because of the specification on using history to tell the stories of working women. Therefore, I intend to situate my project within the broader theme of the Wom@work project, to explore how female dressmakers, from 1919 to 1970, contributed to the growth and development of both the colonial and post-colonial economies through their sartorial skills.

In this project, I intend to work on women and the dressmaking profession to ascertain whether the sewing machine offered a symbolic meaning or some form of social security to women in the Gold Coast and Ghana. Interestingly, in 2019, when one of my younger sisters had completed university and was awaiting graduation, she discussed with me her dream to combine professional teaching with dressmaking. It sounded mirthful. However, I was fascinated by her explanations of how she can use her leisure time and holidays to make dresses for people to generate additional income. Then, also, in February 2023, when one of my friends was getting married, her father requested a Singer sewing machine as part of her dowry. We found it amusing as friends made jokes because we did not understand why her father was asking for a sewing machine for a professional teacher and not anything in relation to her career. Upon second thought, I realised my grandmother, a farmer, had a sewing machine, and my aunt, whom I lived with, had also a sewing machine, although she was a professional teacher.

The connections from these personal encounters aroused my interest when I read about the theme for this PhD project. Through observation, I became aware of the fact that most parents and guardians request sewing machines for their daughters as part of their dowries in Southern Ghana. If my 95-year-old grandmother had hers when getting married, there must be a historical connection with women, sewing machines, and work in the Gold Coast and Ghana. I seek to use this project to investigate the past and discover how dressmaking became a predominantly female profession and found its way into Ghanaian culture.

Looking back before colonial rule, tailors were predominantly men. However, the first wave of missionaries’ education for young women and its focus on dressmaking and other domestic science subjects influenced a lot of women to become dressmakers. Despite the formal training women received in missionary schools like Mmofraturo in Kumasi, the informal training system, known as apprenticeship, also existed. Apart from the financial gains women derived from being dressmakers, they also gained social recognition. Affirming this, Jean Allman in her article, “Making Mothers: Missionaries, Medical Officers and Women’s Work in Colonial Asante, 1924 -1945”, published in 1994, uses the case of Mary Anokye, a princess of Tafo who received training in Mmofraturo to become a professional dressmaker, also had the opportunity to marry a catechist.

Despite dressmaking being a popular urban profession for women in colonial and post-colonial times, female dressmakers are often understudied. I seek to historicise female dressmakers within the broader context of urban professions in both the colonial and post-colonial settings to tease out how dressmaking shaped women’s lives. To do this, I will first trace a history of dressmaking in the context of urban working-class women and female labour on the Gold Coast. I will also explore the working ethos, system of pricing, values, environment, and professionalism in dressmaking during colonial and post-colonial Ghana, explore how dressmakers influenced politics and nationalism through their sartorial skills, examine the influence of urbanisation and globalisation on dressmaking in the colonial and post-colonial epochs and then analyse the cultural, economic and social impacts of dressmaking on women in colonial and post-colonial times.

Through this project, I look forward to learning new methodologies and perspectives on African history to help conduct research on women and children in the future. I extend my greetings to all project members and wish you the best of luck as we begin this task.

Source: Central Office of Information, Needlework Lesson in Gold Coast, 1942-1964. Reference: INF 10/121(29) Retrieved online on 6 December 2023.

OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
domenico (January 24, 2024). Researching dressmaking in Ghana: welcome Juliet Tiwaah Adu Boahen in the Womatwork project! Women at Work. Retrieved February 15, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/vpse