Ghana’s Black Queens : The Women Who Made Football in the Postcolonial Nation

Focusing on the story of women’s football in Ghana, this to book tells the universal story of women’s struggle for full and equal citizenship from a uniquely African and postcolonial perspective.

Exploring themes of gender, sexuality, national identity, and culture, Ghana’s Black Queens situates women’s football in Ghana within the context of international, national, and local politics, to show how FIFA’s decision to establish the Women’s World Cup in 1991 had direct implications on a burgeoning women’s football landscape that had previously been ignored by the Ghana Football Administration.

A focus on the tenacity of the administrators, journalists and pioneering players who helped to establish a national women’s football league in the postcolonial nation shows how African women launched an indigenous struggle against gender inequality, negotiated with heterosexual patriarchy, and navigated through transnational capital. With insights from in-depth interviews, newspaper and personal archives, and ethnography at matches around the country, Ghana’s Black Queens paints a vibrant picture of the struggles and successes of the athletes and administrators who helped to make women’s football a reality in the postcolonial nation, and the implications of their efforts on the sporting landscape today.

Ghana’s Black Queens is a sociologically rich text that allows readers to draw broad connections between the immediate story and the larger struggle for women’s equality within the world of soccer and beyond.