Ghana's Culture of Blame: Why We Teach Girls to Hide but Boys to Assault

The comments attributed to Daniel Nortey—normalising rape as inevitable male behaviour—have reignited a critical conversation about sexual violence in Ghana. But what the backlash has largely missed is a deeper cultural problem: Ghana has spent generations teaching girls how to avoid being raped, while barely teaching boys that they must never rape.

From childhood, Ghanaian girls absorb a suffocating set of rules. Cover up. Don't walk alone at night. Avoid certain places. Don't trust strangers. Watch your surroundings. Protect your reputation. The implicit message: your safety depends on your obedience to these restrictions. The moment a sexual assault occurs, the questions directed at the victim become devastating: What were you wearing? Where were you? Who were you with? Why did you go there? These inquiries pivot the conversation away from the perpetrator's choices and towards the victim's perceived failures.

Meanwhile, boys grow up hearing something entirely different. In schoolyards and homes across the country, young men hear peers say things like, "A woman will say no until you force yourself on her." Some deliver these statements as jokes. Others speak with disturbing confidence. And in many cases, adults either laugh, dismiss it as natural male behaviour, or simply move on. The message is clear: sexual persistence is normal. Ignoring a woman's refusal is expected. Treating consent as negotiable rather than absolute is just how men are.

The Burden Placed on Girls, the Freedom Given to Boys

This asymmetry is not accidental. Ghanaian society has constructed a framework in which women are responsible for managing men's sexual behaviour through their clothing, where they go, how they speak, and how they live. Women are made to feel that their safety is contingent on avoiding situations where men might "take advantage." The logical conclusion, deeply internalised by Ghanaian girls and women, is that if something happens to them, they must have done something wrong.

But here is the uncomfortable truth: a woman dressed modestly can still be assaulted. A woman in revealing clothing has every right to refuse sexual advances. A married woman can say no. A woman who has previously consented can withdraw consent. Clothing is not consent. Friendliness is not consent. Silence is not consent. And yet, Ghanaian culture continues to treat women's appearance and behaviour as the primary explanation for men's decision to commit sexual violence.

What of the boys? While girls are being taught fear, boys are rarely receiving explicit instruction about respect, boundaries, or what consent truly means. Many grow up believing that persistence is romantic, that a woman's "no" is negotiable, that sexual conquest measures manhood. They absorb these ideas from peers, from jokes that normalise sexual aggression, from entertainment that portrays relentless pursuit as desirable. No one sits them down and says: rejection is not humiliation. Another person's boundaries are not open for negotiation. Your attraction to someone does not grant you rights to their body.

Why This Matters for Ghana

Ghana's sexual violence crisis cannot be addressed without fundamentally rethinking how the nation socialises its young people. The comments attributed to Nortey did not emerge from a vacuum; they reflect a worldview that has been normalised, repeated, and implicitly endorsed by silence across families, schools, and communities. When adults laugh at jokes that trivialise rape, when they dismiss harmful attitudes as "boys being boys," they are teaching the next generation that sexual violence is inevitable, forgivable, and fundamentally a woman's problem to manage.

Ghana's education system, workplaces, families, and religious institutions must undergo a profound shift. Consent education cannot be an afterthought or a single assembly in secondary school. It must begin in primary school and be woven throughout a boy's education. Young men must hear repeatedly and clearly: a woman's body belongs to her alone. Her clothing is not an invitation. Her friendliness is not permission. Her silence is not agreement. Her previous consent does not mean future consent. Respect for boundaries is not negotiable.

Equally important, Ghana must stop asking victims what they were wearing, where they were going, or what they did wrong. The question must always be: why did he think he had the right?

The culture that produced Daniel Nortey's comments did not create itself overnight. It was built through generations of misplaced responsibility, normalised harm, and deafening silence. Dismantling it will require Ghana to make a collective choice: to teach girls that they are not responsible for men's violence, and to teach boys that respect and consent are not optional.