“Dipo” Womanhood Rites: A Control Mechanism of Young Girls in Yilo-Krobo, Ghana

Abstract

Pre-marital sex is popularly considered to be a forbidden or a deviant act in the Ghanaian socio-cultural context. Violators are punished in some societies to serve as a deterrent since the act has both religious and social implications. The Krobo ethnic group of the Eastern Region of Ghana, is a conservative and patrilineal society where virginity is valued. They coduct Dipo womanhood rites for young girls who have reached the marriageable age into womanhood. The young girl undergoing the Dipo rites is known as Dipo-yoo (Dipo girl) and is expected to be a virgin. Accordingly, Dipo womanhood rites was instituted to mainly ensure that young girls in Krobo protect their chastity until marriage. Contemporarily, while a school of thought argued that the rites has lost its value due to modifications, another school of thought also claim that the rites is relevant in controlling the sexual conduct of young girls. Given these divergent views, the current study adopted Hirschi’s (1969) social control theory to deepen the understanding of the relevance or otherwise of Dipo womanhood rites in controlling early pre-marital sexual debut of young girls. To achieve this, the mixed methods (ie. quantitative and qualitative) was employed to gather data from respondents made up of 286 and 66 young girls and boys respectively aged 15-24 years and 16 key informants from communities in Yilo-Krobo Municipality. Findings indicate that commitment and involvement in the rites significantly reduce the likelihood of young girls to engage in early pre-marital sex. On the other hand, attachments to parents/guardians and beliefs in the principle of the rites were not statistically significant in explaining the likelihood of young girls’ engagement in early pre-marital sex. The study recommends that the community should engage the social control factors more critically to help the effective use of Dipo as a cultural mechanism to control the sexual behaviour of young girls until they are married or matured enough to negotiate safe sex. Keywords: Dipo, Womanhood rites, Control Mechanism, Young girls, Yilo-Krobo