Feeding the future in Ghana: Gender inequality, poverty, and food insecurity

Abstract

As women's empowerment is critical for the adoption of agricultural technologies by farmers, some governments have over the last three decades adopted a gender equality approach to food security. In Ghana, women play a vital role as farmers and food processors, which means they impact household nutrition in important ways. In this article, we explore women's empowerment in maize‐producing sites in Ghana by drawing on original data collected from over 400 farmers and service providers as part of a United States Agency for International Development‐funded Feed the Future project. We employ a quasi‐“women's empowerment in agriculture index” to measure the extent to which men and women maize producers are either empowered or disempowered in the domains of production, access to resources, control over income, leadership, and time allocation. Our study reveals that cost and time poverty are the main factors that influence the adoption of technologies to reduce postharvest losses. We also find that women are disproportionately disempowered in the areas of control over the use of income and time poverty. Importantly, we further find that researchers need to account for perceived versus actual empowerment when examining gender inequality in agriculture. Our study findings and policy recommendations will be of interest to policymakers, scholars, and development practitioners.