ByCharles Prempeh, PhD*
Ghana’s current struggle to achieve its long-promised economic prosperity is hindered by one of the most persistent challenges of our time: galamsey, or illegal mining. The environmental, social, and moral consequences of galamsey are evident to all. Yet, beneath the public condemnations and policy debates lies a question less frequently explored: What role do women play, directly and indirectly, in the national fight against galamsey? In a world that often narrates itself as male-dominated and structurally marginalizing to women, it is worth asking how gender, culture, and social expectations intertwine with ecological harm in Ghana.
President John Dramani Mahama, who is just about celebrating his anniversary in office has brought a notable degree of economic stabilization according to many Ghanaians. Analysts from the country’s major political traditions, the NPP and the NDC, may disagree on the magnitude of economic progress, but there is broad consensus that galamsey remains one of Ghana’s disturbing ecological threats. The president’s anniversary in office is therefore concurrently marked by a period of intensified conversations around illegal mining. Public anger seems to grow alongside the persistence of the practice—as though our outrage is mocked by the intransigence of the problem.
Part of this persistent frustration arises from the reluctance of Ghanaians to confront certain uncomfortable truths. The reason for this is characterized by the very constitution of truth: Truth is often painful; it tends to separate what is superficial from what is fundamental. It distinguishes between scholarship pursued as vocation and scholarship pursued for convenience. Truth may grow skinny, but it does not perish. It does not require defense; it simply waits to be tested by reality.
Applying quintessential prism of truth to discussing the galamsey conundrum, it is imperative for citizens to move beyond the usual overly simplistic gendered explanations—especially the reductive binary of men as oppressors and women as the oppressed. Such a narrowcasting framework, while potentially important for specific contexts (including deprecatory practices such as witchcraft accusations), does not sufficiently explain the social complexities that undergird illegal mining. Women are not passive and naïve bystanders in the Ghanaian society; they possess expressive and agentic power, expressible in their historic expressive roles that is equal in influence to the instrumental roles associated with men. This reaffirms a philosophy that much as men and women share the same ontological dignity, their functional expressions vary. This also means that much as women and men’s role should be valorized in complementary terms, informed by the rhetoric of Marxism, the role of men and women has been routinized through the corridors of competition.
The superficiality of Marxist analysis, reinvented as critical theory, blurred our appreciating of complex challenges of society. Instead, the capacity of society to resolve its challenges has inspired an overly simplistic binary of “blame culture” and “penitentiary culture.” Meanwhile, because “who did this to us,” is often preferrable to “what did we do to bring this to ourselves,” as citizens, we have frequently deployed “blame culture” for social problems, forgetting that blame culture rather keeps us on a treadmill. Regrettably, it is such simplistic accusatory approach that has sustained feminist discourse on gendered roles. In critiquing what some call patriarchal norms, strands of radical feminist thought, drawing inspiration and edification from existentialist traditions such as those popularized by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, have against reality dismissed the functional differences that many societies historically relied upon, as inherently axiomatic, to preserve social and ecological order.
Existentialism places human agency above nature, turning a subverted understanding of culture taking a priori status as a canon of explaining reality. But long before this intellectual shift, communities across the world, including the Stoics and African ancestors, understood that nature was imbued with logicality and structure. The major human task was, therefore, about how to separate invention from discovery. In other words, the capacity of human beings to discern telos in nature conterminously imposes an obligation on them to align with it by carefully choreographing technological innovativeness away from complex forms technical and biological abstractions. Wisdom was to be used to preserve nature, not overpower it.
Taking the above as an entry point to discussing Ghana’s fight against galamsey: contemporary feminist interpretations often attribute social outcomes to socialization. Yet if socialization, especially in early childhood, is primarily shaped by women, how do we explain the emergence of men who supposedly break free from this early influence? Similarly, while numerous conferences and legislations have been organized to address women’s vulnerabilities, few comparable efforts exist to explore men’s own social or health challenges. Even men’s health issues, such as prostate enlargement, attract minimal attention, suggesting that men’s vulnerability is socially under-examined.
Into this context enters a deeper, often neglected observation: men’s pursuit of pleasure, whether through procreation, companionship, or social validation, is intricately linked to women. The material aspirations of many men are, directly or indirectly, driven by the desire to appeal to women. Cars, houses, clothes, status symbols: these often represent attempts to meet socially constructed expectations of desirability.
But just as men pursue pleasures from women, women also pursue pleasures, economic, social, and emotional, from men. Mining sites, historically and globally, have always attracted women seeking economic opportunity. It is not unusual to find women at galamsey sites who invest heavily in their personal appearance or entrepreneurial presence to benefit from the gold economy. While this is not inherently wrong, it complicates the narrative that galamsey is solely driven by male greed. Many women prefer materially prosperous partners, regardless of the means through which wealth is acquired. This preference, when extended into the mining economy, indirectly fuels the persistence of illegal mining.
This does not absolve men who exploit or harm women. Such behaviors are rightly condemned. Nor does it deny women’s intelligence or capability. Rather, it underscores the need to understand gender roles not merely as social constructs but as interconnected expressions of human functionality. Men often operate within a framework of transcendental drive, seeking achievement, influence, and recognition. Women often operate within the expressive domain—sustaining life, nurturing community, and shaping social morality. These roles are complementary, not hierarchical. When either role is distorted, social and ecological imbalance follows.
Historical examples illustrate the profound influence women have wielded through expressive power. Yaa Asantewaa of the Asante, Deborah of Ancient Israel, and several other women in other cultures who either praised or provoked docile men into action all demonstrate how women’s moral and expressive leadership can inspire, restrain, or redirect the actions of men. Even in academic settings, the performative expression of masculinity is often heightened or moderated depending on the presence and approval of women. Men may act with bravado or restraint depending on whether or not they believe women are observing them. This dynamic is not trivial—it is evidence of women’s enduring soft power, which is also proverbialized as, “Men go to war because women are watching.”
Women’s soft power, indeed, is often stronger than the presumed hard power of men. It is in private spaces, especially the bedroom, the place where loneliness and aloneness are resolved, that decisions of great consequence are often influenced. The bedroom is not merely domestic; it carries the political, psychological, and social resources in shaping and structuring public life. Hence, whatever takes place in the privacy of the bedroom hardly remains private. Men frequently make their most vulnerable promises in the intimate context of affection. Many careers, reputations, and decisions have been shaped by this private domain.
This is not to trivialize women’s role but to highlight how intimate, expressive, and soft power can shape public outcomes, including galamsey. At mining sites, the presence of women offering sexual services, companionship, care, or commerce can and do embolden men to persist in destructive work. Conversely, if women withheld their participation or influence in these spaces by prioritizing ecological sanctity and harmony over the allure of gold (material things), the mining pits might lose some of their social appeal. In other words, women have the capacity to redirect men’s energies toward preservation rather than destruction.
In October 2025, I attended a conference in Accra, organized by distinguished women scholars and theologians with a discussion that centered on women’s potential contributions to combating galamsey. The conference was insightful in drawing on historical figures, indigenous ethics, Islamic teachings, Christian theology, ecofeminist perspectives, and cultural symbolism to stage the role women could play in stemming the tide against galamsey. Yet one question lingered for me: What exactly is the unique role women can play in this fight? While women may not have frequently fought in militaristic fashion, their power has historically been moral, persuasive, expressive, and communal, all of which, as I have already to, were powerful resource in shaping the tapestries of society.
Thus, in thinking about Ghana’s ecological crisis, we must acknowledge that solutions will not emerge solely from political directives, environmental regulations, or technological interventions. The fecundity of these measures must necessarily be anchored in a moral realignment. The moral realignment would require that women embrace their expressive/soft power and operationalize it to guide society toward ecological responsibility. It will require women to leverage their soft power to impress upon men to regain their transcendental focus, not for selfish pleasure but for communal preservation.
Consequently, as I have said about the bedroom: The bedroom is the epicenter of women’s agency center, not marginal spaces. It is a decisive space. It is in the bedroom that men find purpose, identity, strength, direction, as well as vulnerabilities. Thus, the intimate space of the bedroom could elevate ecological consciousness to hold the fortress of Ghana’s ecology against galamsey. If women were to apply the control over the bedroom to uphold values that prioritize life over wealth, men will follow. Certainly, this is not a burden placed on women, but both an obligation and acknowledgment of their overwhelming soft-power influence.
In conclusion, Ghana’s fight against galamsey is not merely an economic or environmental struggle; it is a social and ontological one. It requires clarity about the expressive roles of women that sustain society. It requires the recognition that women possess immense expressive power capable of reshaping men’s aspirations and redirecting destructive tendencies to affection and productivity. It requires an appreciation of the bedroom as a site where destinies, decisions, and values are formed. If women use their expressive power wisely, and if men respond with transcendental responsibility, Mahama’s led-Ghana can restore ecological balance between humanity and nature. For where women exercise soft power with ancestral and biblical sagacity, men’s hard power in destroying the environment to please women would become unnecessary. Ultimately, where the sanctity of life is upheld over the seduction of gold, Ghana’s rivers of life can flow again.
* Charles Prempeh is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Cultural and African Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi-Ghana
