Kate Abbam
Kate Abbam | |
---|---|
Born | Ewura Ekua Badoe 24 October 1934 University of Ghana, Legon |
Occupation(s) | Journalist, editor and consultant on women and development |
Known for | Founder of Ghana's first women's magazine |
Kate Victoria Teiba Abbam, born Ewura Ekua Badoe (24 October 1934 – May 2016) was a Ghanaian journalist, editor and consultant on women and development.[1][2] Abbam founded Ghana's first women's magazine, Obaa Sima ("The Ideal Woman"), in 1971.[3]
Life
Awura Ekuwa Badoe was born on 24 October 1934 in
Kate Abbam founded Obaa Sima as a monthly magazine in 1971. The name, she later explained in an interview, referred to "a woman who is industrious and helps her community... women are called ' obaa sima ' when they have made it through their own efforts – it is the embodiment of the traditional woman".[3] Abbam was owner, editor and principal contributor to the magazine. Her novelette Beloved Twin, for example, was serialized there in 1971–2.[8]
In July 1972, Abbam's husband died, leaving her with small children. She wrote about her treatment as a widow, summarily dispossessed by her husband's family, in Obaa Sima.
She died in May 2016. Her niece is the writer Adwoa Badoe.
Works
- Sweet Deceit
- (as Awura-Ekuwa Badoe) Beloved Twin, Scorpio Books Ghana, 1973
- (as Ekuwa Teima Badoe) I Shall Return: romance from the woods. 1975
References
- ^ "Kate Abbam passes on", Modern Ghana, 10 May 2016.
- ^ a b c d Edmund Quaynor, "Editor of 'Obaa Sima' magazine passes on", Ghana News Agency, 28 July 2016.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-976509-6.
- ^ Ralph Uwechue, Africa Who's Who, 1991, p. 7.
- ^ a b Esi Sutherland-Addy. "Kate Abbam, On Widowhood". In Esi Sutherland-Addy; Aminata Diaw (eds.). Women Writing Africa: West Africa and the Sahel. Wits University Press. p. 227.
- ^ Africa Woman, 1975
- ^ The World Who's Who of Women, Melrose Press, 1982, p.1
- Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 67, No. 3 (1997), p. 398.
- ^ Abbam, "Ghanaian Women in the Mass Media", unpublished paper written for International Women's Year, 1975. Cited in Margaret Gallagher, Unequal Opportunities: The Case of Women and the Media, UNESCO, 1981.