Between Knowing and Doing: Reflections on Feminist Praxis in Ghana’s WISE Woman Project.
For
decades, development research has wrestled with a fundamental question: who
defines problems, designs solutions, and represents the realities of the Global
South? Postcolonial scholars such as Mohanty, Spivak, and McEwan have long
shown how development discourse often silences local voices, recasting women in
the Global South as passive subjects rather than knowledge producers. These
critiques have inspired a move toward approaches that not only rethink how we
write about development but also reimagine how development is practiced. I
found these debates especially resonant while examining the WISE Woman Project,
led by Dr. Gloria Aidoo-Frimpong during her 2025 fieldwork in Ghana. Designed
to improve awareness and uptake of HIV self-testing (HIVST) and pre-exposure
prophylaxis (PrEP) among young women, the project transforms research into a
site of co-creation and feminist empowerment. Through participatory methods, particularly
the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) and Human-Centered Design (HCD), it redefines
what it means to know, intervene, and empower. While HIV prevention is its
practical goal, the project, at a deeper level, challenges colonial logics of
expertise by centering Ghanaian women’s lived experiences and wisdom as the
foundation for social innovation. In this post, I read the WISE Woman study as
a case of feminist praxis that turns postcolonial critique into participatory
action. I argue that the project shifts the paradigm from development for women
to development with women.
From
Postcolonial Critique to Participatory Praxis
Postcolonial
feminism emerged to correct Western feminism’s universalizing tendencies and
mainstream development’s technocratic assumptions. In Under Western Eyes,
Mohanty (2004) critiques Western feminist scholarship for producing a singular
image of the “Third World Woman,” erasing difference and local agency. While Spivak
(1988) asks whether the subaltern, those structurally excluded from power, can
ever truly speak within colonial frameworks, McEwan (2001) urges feminist
practice to move beyond critique by reconfiguring research relationships and
ethics. Other decolonial thinkers such as Mignolo (2009) and Tuck & Yang
(2012) extend these insights, calling for epistemic disobedience, which in most
part refers to refusing Eurocentric categories of knowledge. They also call for
pluriversality, which refers to the coexistence of multiple epistemologies.
Collectively, these frameworks converge on one imperative: research should be
done with people, not about them. The WISE Woman Project operationalizes this
ethic through participatory co-design.
WISE
Woman: Context and Vision
HIV
remains a pressing challenge in Ghana, disproportionately affecting young women
who account for over 80 percent of new infections (GSS, 2023). Despite the
effectiveness of HIVST and PrEP, uptake remains low due to stigma, gendered
norms, and inadequate youth-friendly services. WISE Woman addresses this gap
through a culturally responsive, women-centered intervention for Ghanaian women
aged 18–35. Workshops were held in Aburi, which represents a neutral,
stigma-free site accessible from both Greater Accra and the Eastern Region. The
project brought together young women, community partners, and health workers to
identify barriers and co-create solutions. The venue and setting itself
symbolized what Homi Bhabha calls a “third space,” a zone where new meanings
and relationships emerge beyond colonial binaries of researcher and researched.
The
project’s name itself is a metaphor for empowerment. WISE can be read as Women’s
Informed Self-Empowerment or Women-Inspired Solutions for Empowerment. More
succinctly, the project is grounded in women’s lived experiences as agents of
change (W), expands access to information and inclusive knowledge-making (I), promotes
self-testing and self-determination (S), and aims to expand women’s autonomy
and equity in decision-making (E). WISE operates both as an acronym and a philosophy
that situates HIV prevention in the wisdom, creativity, and collective agency
of Ghanaian women. It shifts the paradigm from treating women as objects of
intervention to acknowledging them as producers of knowledge.
Two approaches in this project stood out: The nominal group technique and the Human-Centered Design.
Nominal Group Technique: Democratizing KnowledgeThe Nominal
Group Technique (NGT) is a structured method for collective brainstorming and
prioritizing ideas. Participants first generate ideas individually, share them
in turn, discuss them for clarity, and finally rank them anonymously to build
consensus. In WISE Woman, NGT guided the participatory workshop in Aburi, where
ten young women and five community partners collaboratively identified
gender-specific barriers to HIV prevention and prioritized feasible strategies.
Each participant’s contribution carried equal weight, ensuring that social
status or education did not determine whose ideas mattered. This process
democratized knowledge creation, where women became theorists of their own
experience, articulating insights about stigma, confidentiality, and gender
power relations. Here, Spivak’s question about the ability of the subaltern to speak meets a pragmatic answer. Through structured participation, the subaltern
not only speaks but also shapes the research agenda.
b Human-Centered
Design: Designing With, Not For
Complementing
NGT, Human-Centered Design (HCD) translates participant ideas into tangible
prototypes. Rooted in empathy and iterative feedback, HCD involves
understanding users’ needs, generating ideas, and testing prototypes
collaboratively. After the NGT session, participants designed and refined intervention
components such as peer-led discussions, community outreach models, and
WhatsApp-based education campaigns. By positioning women as co-designers, WISE
Woman reclaims development from the technocratic logic of external expertise.
The iterative process ensured that solutions were not only feasible but
culturally resonant. In this sense, HCD enacts McEwan’s call for feminist
praxis that is reflexive and locally grounded while realizing Mignolo’s notion
of epistemic disobedience by privileging experiential knowledge over imported
models. Moreover, the project’s use of WhatsApp, an everyday communication tool
in Ghana, illustrates that transformation does not mean rejecting modernity but
embedding technology within familiar cultural and digital ecologies.
What
does all this mean for development practice?
The
theoretical foundations from our Gender and Development seminar come alive
through WISE Woman. The critique of Western feminist universalism is countered
by the project’s attention to difference. It does not assume a single Ghanaian
woman’s experience but allows multiple voices to coexist. The challenge of the
subaltern’s silence finds resolution in structured participation. The
increasing insistence on redistributing power in knowledge production is
realized through NGT’s egalitarian method. Finally, decolonization is embodied
by enacting workshops that return control of research design to the community
itself. Critique attains meaning only when translated into relational,
context-specific action.
The WISE
Woman Project also illustrates that feminist approaches to development are not
abstract ideals but actionable practices. By centering Ghanaian women’s
experiences, employing participatory methods, and reframing “WISE” as an ethic
of empowerment, the project redefines global health intervention. Where
traditional models operate through extraction and external authority, WISE
Woman builds through co-creation and mutual accountability. It transforms
critique into a praxis of unlearning colonial habits of knowing and doing.
To make development wise is to make it reflexive, inclusive, and grounded in
the wisdom of those it seeks to serve. Solidarity begins not with sameness but
with mutual recognition of difference. In that spirit, the WISE Woman Project
stands as an invitation to imagine development as a collaborative space where
knowledge flows from the ground up and women’s collective insight becomes the
foundation of change.
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