Exploring the experiences of female small-scale organic cocoa farmers about gender-based inequality in agency and empowerment in light of the Sustainable Development Goal 5: A case study from rural Ghana

Abstract

In all parts of the Global South, female farmers face challenges to access productive resources and output markets in an equal manner as male farmers, which is referred to as the gender gap in agriculture. In Ghana, where cocoa is one of the major cash crops, these systematic disadvantages mean that female small-scale cocoa farmers face challenges to equally benefit from cultivating the cash crop. Even though there is agreement among researchers that quantitative differences in access to assets result from underlying social gender norms and intra-household inequalities in bargaining power, there is a research gap as to how these underlying causes affect female small-scale cocoa farmer’s agency and empowerment in private and public spheres.