An Ethnographic Study of Infidelity among Married Women in Tamale, Ghana: Motivations, Social Perceptions, and Gendered Consequences

This ethnographic research investigates female infidelity among married women in Tamale, Northern Ghana, their reasons, daily lives, and gendered repercussions they encounter. Within a patriarchal and religiously conservative society, the research employs participant observation and qualitative interviews in order to unravel how women navigate extra-marital affairs within contexts of moral judgment and socio-economic marginalization. Research also indicates that adultery is not the direct result of immorality but a reaction to emotional abandonment, economic insecurity, and sexual inadequacy. These women engage in such extramarital sex as coping strategies, claims to respectability, and acts of resistance, but strategically utilize respectability in their performance in an effort to eschew censure. Despite risks of stigmatization, dispossession, and violence, the respondents exercise agency through concealment, negotiation, and emotional rationality. The study problematizes dominant narratives that pathologize women's infidelity and instead highlights its root in structural inequality and constrained choice. It contributes to African feminist scholarship and gender studies by taking into account women's voices and locating their intimacy choices.