WOMEN AND NATURAL RESOURCES IN GHANA
Narrowed topic for the seminar: women empowerment and vulnerability
Mind map main topics = vulnerability & empowerment
Vulnerabilities (in access/management of natural resources):
-
women dependent on farming, because of their leading role in the house/providing food
for the family, so topic related to: climate change (adaptation, climate strategies) and food
(in)security;
-
no access to education (and sensitization to education goals): mobility problems (distance
and fears), workloads and image that women have (stereotypes, as sexual objects but also,
in general, for the role they are considered to have in society);
-
income households:
market access
→ autonomy, male-headed households that are diversified and market oriented
→ no surplus
non farming-related income
Politics, education, market
Rural women, CSOs (also
Ass. of lawyers or gender
activists) active in the
Agriculture, family/household
region, governmental (local)
Institutions, family (husbands),
Queen Mothers
DOMAINS
ACTORS
↖
↗
Women vulnerability in the Volta region
(related to access/management of natural resources)
↓
PROCESSES
Urban migration, empowerment, land sales & inheritance,
Climate change, women access to politics arena
-
Group “individual interests”:
No financial capital of women
Commodification of land
Migration (of men) and the ones (women) who stay behind
Food insecurity
Role of CSOs in empowering women
Weaker household strategies related to females when females have the role to provide
food/ female headed ones, diversified ones
Government subsidized crops (cocoa), access for women (but no income in the short run)
Climate change adaptation
Customary law and tradition
(Local) politics
What is VULNERABILITY? What is it in THEORY and what in the CONTEXT?
No mining, forest, main activities agriculture, forest (timber) and some fishing in the Volta Region.
These are rural-agrarian based communities.
Agro-bio-diversity important strategy to fight climate change.
TOPIC: Vulnerability of rural Women in Northern Volta region in household context in natural
resources management
Access to natural resource management for women in Northern Volta region.
Farming in this part of Ghana is capital intensive, so it is a problem for women that have not the
possibility to hire people.
Talking about food security land access can be associated to land management, and also problem
of climate change can be brought in.
Issue: women have to be able to have the capital to exploit the land.
Women’s access to natural resource in order to meet food security (?)
Women’s food security deriving from land management (?)
Define vulnerability (who is vulnerable and who’s not, and why) in the context so to be able to
narrow our actors .
FIDAL International federation of female lawyers.
Assignments for next seminar: review actors, vulnerability and articles that Joshua posted, and
then post on the Wiki our remarks.
Kpandu, Hoi, Biakoye (disctricts of Volta region).