Women in Ghana showcase their abilities

Once a male-dominated occupation, women in Ghana have taken up bigger challenges, among them driving passenger buses. It is no longer considered a taboo nowadays to see a woman behind the wheels in Ghana. Throughout the world, women are considered to be more careful drivers than their male counterparts.

The planting season is crucial to households in Ghana's rural communities. When the rains come, women tend to their farms for a timely and abundant harvest. With little help from men, most women often work on the farms with the help of their next of kin.

Ghana’s police march through Tamale with women at the forefront to showcase that they are security-conscious and can play a better role in community policing. It is only in recent years that more women have joined the police force.

Due to the lack of affordable energy for cooking, women in rural Ghana often trek long distances to collect firewood for preparing meals for their families. However, this has also led to a drastic cutting down of trees and shrubs for fuel.

For better results from the crops grown, much effort is put into getting clean shea nuts that will eventually be roasted to extract butter for both home use and sale at the market.

Drying the shea nuts is the second phase in the process of making of shea butter. The work is done manually by the women, who always have to keep watch over the clouds lest the rains interrupt the drying.

Roasting the shea nuts is part of the process of extracting shea butter from the nuts. Shea butter processing is solely done by women in northern Ghana, mainly to support their families.

At the end of the rainy season, yams are the first crops to be harvested. And for that reason, the 'Yam festival' is held to celebrate the harvest, which is often in abundant enough to feed individual families and sell the surplus at the market.