When I arrived in Ghana, I felt eager to meet up with some locals to play soccer. It's the biggest sport in Ghana, and it's also one of my personal favorites. After adjusting to the new personalities and views around me, I started to realize that playing soccer was going to be more of a challenge than I thought. There were hardly ever any girls outside playing with the boys, and I never saw groups of girls playing soccer at all. It became clear that women do not typically play sports, or at least it is not quite as common as it is in the United States. More often, women here will involve themselves in dance, and there are a ton of great female dancers. Aside from dance, some women do enjoy tennis or volleyball, but their number cannot compare to the number of men who are involved in various other sports.
This sent me on a quest to figure out why. What was the difference between Ghana and the United States? In recent years, there has been a strong push for more women to participate in sport activities, but for a long time, people in Ghana looked on sports as a male-only activity. I asked members of my host family why this is. They explained that from a young age, girls are taught how to cook and work around the house. Sports are seen as aggressive and tiresome, more suitable for boys. Some girls may learn how to play soccer, but the game won’t be emphasized as a key part of their life.
