The Ladies’ Chairman : Male Headship and Gender Equality in Pentecostal Ghana

Sammanfattning: Within the field of international development there has in recent years been an emerging interest to explore how secular and faith-based modes of development may interact. Yet there remains a considerable knowledge gap in how religious values, believes and practices may challenge, accommodate or complement secular development agendas. Against this backdrop, this thesis aims to make a small contribution to move our understanding onwards. Based on fieldwork in Apam, Ghana, my project illustrates how an individual may navigate between Pentecostal ideology, secular development discourse, and traditional believes and practices in contemporary Africa. More specifically, I employ theoretical insights from the anthropology of ethics to analyse how a young Christian man constructs his ethical identity while aspiring to shoulder the headship of his family, and being a promotor for gender equality and women empowerment in his community.