AsanteHightimersand the Fashionable Display of Women's Wealth in Contemporary Ghana

Abstract

In Ghana's Ashanti Region, there is a certain category of woman commonly called preman (pl. premanfoo), a word that is the local version of the English play-man or playboy. Despite this word's seemingly male cast, preman is a term applied primarily to women, particularly wealthy market traders. This article explores the relationship between the flamboyantly fashionable behavior of the preman and the long-established Asante cultural practice of poatwa (“challenge”), involving both visual and verbal assertions of superior status. During the twentieth century, fashionable dress developed into a particularly female mode of high-status display that provided visible proof of a woman's success in accumulating the prestigious textiles that became an increasingly important form of female wealth. The most extreme form of such displays are the extravagant, highly visible, and sometimes scandalous fashions of the Asante preman, which may be best understood as a distinctively female mode of contemporary Asante poatwa behavior.

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