Out-Migration of Married Women and Experiences of Left-Behind Husbands in the Nandom Municipality

Abstract

In Ghana, migration has traditionally been dominated by males leaving women and children behind until the late 1980s when females begun to migrate independently. Consequently, there is paucity of literature on the experiences of left-behind husbands whose wives had migrated internally. Using the Nandom Municipality as a case study, 331 left-behind husbands responded to a survey questionnaire while 15 others participated in indepth interviews. The quantitative data were analyzed using both descriptive statistics and a binary logistic regression while content analysis based on common themes was employed to analyze the qualitative data that were transcribed. The study shows that the left-behind husbands, who were mostly subsistence farmers with primary or no formal education, approved their wives’ decision to migrate based on economic reasons. In the absence of their wives, most men experienced challenges in cooking, drawing water, cleaning the home, shopping, sowing/planting, weeding, harvesting and carting of farm produce home or to the market for sale.  In particular, husbands who were older, had secondary education or had younger children experienced more challenges in the absence of their wives. As a coping strategy, most of the left-behind husbands relied on support from the extended family members in both household chores and some farming activities. From the findings, there is the need to provide children of both sexes with the same socialization process to curb gender division of labour in the Nandom Municipality. It is also important to promote female education and skilled training to reduce out-migration of females from the Nandom Municipality.