The discursive construction of men and women in Ghanaian parliamentary discourse: A corpus-based study

Abstract

Through corpus-based methods, this study examines Ghanaian parliamentary discourses around the lemmas/the lexemes/the nouns gender, men and women and topics/themes that characterise them. The analysis shows that women are discursively constructed as vulnerable and disadvantaged people who need empowerment through small-scale businesses and increased political participation, which reflects a recognition of women's rights and gender equality/equity. Conversely, men are ascribed such masculine features as strength, authority and breadwinning competencies. These represent stratified patterns of gendered Ghanaian practices. While issues of women are constructed from a problem-solution perspective, men are more positively constructed as great. Furthermore, women are more likely than men to talk about women, which suggests that gender-sensitive parliaments may strengthen the position of gender-based interests.

Keywords

• Parliamentary representation
• Discursive construction
• Gender
• Men
• Women
• Corpus-based approach