On the Field: Race, Gender and Sports in Colonial Ghana

Abstract

This article analyses Ghanaian women's sport practice from the late nineteenth century to the late 1950s, from games intertwined with displays of colonial authority to school competitions, physical education and tennis. The article argues that their performances played with changing categorisations of African girlhood and womanhood, especially as young literate women from cosmopolitan urban families were expected to uphold the highest physical, moral and intellectual standards, with an explicit focus on respectability and physical fitness. Not only were these calls constrained by gendered and class-related norms, but they also established these norms in connection with Western activities.