BABY BAN — Female Recruits Faced Dismissal for Pregnancy as One Nurse Learned the Hard Way

Retired Lieutenant Colonel Georgina Mensah has recalled a strict military rule that prevented newly recruited cadets from marrying or having children during the early years of their service.

Mensah, popularly known as “Grandma Soja,” said the rule was in place when she joined the Ghana Military Academy and was strictly enforced.

According to her, cadets were told that they could not marry for three years after joining the military.

“They said if I join the army, I won’t have children for the next three years. Actually, you can’t marry for the next three years,” she recalled.

Mensah said the restriction was not merely theoretical, recalling the case of a nurse who was dismissed after becoming pregnant during training.

“She got pregnant and they sacked her,” she said.

The nurse, according to Mensah, had entered the military around the same period as her.

Mensah herself said she was not concerned by the restriction because she did not see marriage as a prerequisite for having children.

“When they said you can’t have a child before three years, I said it’s okay,” she recalled.

She said the interview panel then asked whether she did not want to get married.

Her response reportedly left the panel laughing.

“You know my answer. I came out, I said, ‘Ah, but you don’t have to marry before you get a child at all,’” she said.

“You don’t have to marry before you have a child.”

Mensah said the exchange contributed to the interview panel’s positive impression of her, and she was eventually selected.

Her military training would go on to become one of the defining chapters of her life, eventually leading to an international career that included United Nations peacekeeping assignments.

She later became Ghana’s first female UN peacekeeper and, according to her account, Ghana’s first female military observer.