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oai:keep.lib.asu.edu:node-2030532025-12-15T17:22:25Zoai_pmh:alloai_pmh:repo_items

203053 https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.2.N.203053 http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ All Rights Reserved 2025 358 pages Doctoral Dissertation Academic theses en Wood, Sandra Freda Dutta, Uttaran De La Garza, Sarah Dutta, Mohan Basu, Ambar Arizona State University Partial requirement for: Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2025 Field of study: Communication Studies This study analyzes how Ghanaian women in rural areas construct meanings, pursue information, and exercise agency about family planning among cultural, institutional, and patriarchal constraints. The study, rooted in the Culture-Centered Approach (CCA) and African Feminism, utilizes critical ethnography via “Enua” organic group discussions, comprehensive interviews, and field observations in southern Ghana. The findings identify four interrelated themes: women's culturally embedded interpretations of family planning, intricate information navigation, tactics of agency characterized by resistance and negotiation, and the prominence of motherhood throughout modernist and developmental narratives. Women reconceptualize family planning as an endeavor of survival, care, and dignity instead of a mechanism for population control. This study amplifies women's voices, challenging prevailing health communication models that marginalize subaltern viewpoints and providing a decolonial interpretation of reproductive health. It necessitates culturally informed, interactive, and contextually relevant communication strategies to promote reproductive justice in Ghana and the Global South. Keywords: Family planning, Culture centered approach, African feminism, women, Africa, Agency Communication Women's Studies Africa African Feminism Agency Culture centered approach Family Planning Women “We Have Our Own Ways”: Centering the Ghanaian Women Experiences on Family Planning