Smallholder Women Farmers' Experiences of Climate Change and Empowerment Strategies in the Upper East Region of Ghana

Abstract

Women's empowerment is essential for attaining gender equality, enhancing food security, and fostering sustainable development. Despite Ghana's dedication to gender equality and the empowerment of women in official policies, the gender inequality gap persists across various sectors of the economy, including the agricultural sector. In light of recent insights into the significance of local knowledge in addressing the adverse effects of climate change, this dissertation examines smallholder women farmers' (SWFs) perception of climate change, coping strategies, and their experience of (dis)empowerment in the Ghana Agricultural Sector Investment Programme (GASIP) in the Upper East Region, using feminist political ecology, Kabeer's empowerment framework, and Global Affairs Canada's Gender Equality and Empowerment Measurement (GEM) Toolkit. The study employed key informant interviews, in-depth semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and document analysis to understand how SWFs are perceiving and coping with climate change effects, as well as the impact of the GASIP on their (dis)empowerment in Ghana. The findings show empirical evidence that SWFs have observed the changing climate in terms of increasing hot temperatures, erratic rainfall, floods and drought, as well as environmental change, including a decline in soil fertility, invasion of fall armyworm (FAW) and bird pests. Women's vulnerabilities are profoundly interconnected with discriminatory social and patriarchal norms as well as structural barriers and inequalities that marginalise their access to productive agricultural resources such as land, fertiliser, and tractor services. The dissertation also found that women beneficiaries in GASIP mixed-gender farm groups exhibited greater empowerment, 'positive gender impact' than those in women-only farm groups across all six empowerment categories of the GEM tool: economic, knowledge, social, self-confidence, physical security, and children's well-being. The findings underscore the need for the government of Ghana and its development partners to integrate gender transformative strategies in development programmes, paying attention to gender relations and intersectional realities of women's and men's lived experiences, accounting for age, class, ethnicity, race, socio-cultural norms, education, religion, marital status, (dis)ability, and sexual orientation. The government should collaborate with all key stakeholders, including traditional authorities, Tindanas (Earth Priests), state bureaucrats, and donor organisations, to promote the pursuit of women's access to land and other agricultural inputs as a human right and promote effective representation of marginalised voices in current land reform processes and structures to ensure gender equality.