Due to a scarcity of virgins, mothers in charge of Dipo (puberty rites) at Dodowa in the Shai Osudoku District of the Greater Accra Region have been obliged to allow non-virgins to participate in the rites.
According to the mothers, it is getting increasingly difficult to find virgin adolescent girls.
As a result, the age-old practice has been adjusted to accommodate non-virgins.
Girls who have had abortions, given birth, or carried pregnancies, on the other hand, are still barred from participating in the rites.
According to them, many females were now sexually active, leaving them with little alternative but to allow “non-virgins” to participate in the rites.
According to a publication by the Mirror newspaper, the decision to allow non-virgins to participate will attract more adolescent girls to the rites which in the past were to usher only virgin girls between the ages of 10 and 15 into puberty or womanhood.
The leader of the “mothers, Awunye Ashiakie, who has been involved in Dipo rites for the past 60 years, said she started assisting older women when she was 20 years old.
She explained that although she prepared over 100 girls for the puberty rites each year, the number was still small as compared to the past.
