A theoretical basis for good governance
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| Isaac Dery School of African and Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics (African Gender Institute) University of Cape Town idery38@yahoo.com ABSTRACT Women’s access to and control over productive resources, including land, have increasingly been recognised in global discussions as a key factor in reducing poverty, ensuring food security and promoting gender equality. Indeed, this argument has been widely accepted by both feminists and development theorists since the s. Based on qualitative research with 50 purposively selected men and women in Ghana’s Upper West region, this study explored the complexity of women’s access to and control overland within a specific relationship of contestations, negotiations, and manipulations with men. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. While theoretically, participants showed that women’s secure access to and control overland have beneficial consequences for women themselves, households and the community at large, in principle, women’s access and control status was premised in the traditional framework which largely deprives women of equal access and/or control over the land. The article indicates that even though land is the most revered resource and indeed, the dominant source of income for the rural poor, especially women, university of south africa Africanus Journal of Development Studies Volume 45 | Number 2 | pp. Print ISSN X Unisa Press university of south africa 29 Dery Access to and control overland as gendered gender-erected discrimination and exclusion are key barriers that prevent many rural women in accessing land. This study argues that women’s weak access rights and control overland continues to perpetuate the feminisation of gender inequality – while men were reported to possess primary access and control overland as the heads of households, women were argued to have secondary rights due to their stranger statuses in their husbands families. Overall, the degree of access to land among women was reported to be situated within two broad contexts – marriage and inheritance. Download 0.82 Mb. Share with your friends:
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