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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Expansion and Contraction in Economic Access for Rural Women in Ghana |
Author: | Mikell, Gwendolyn |
Year: | 1985 |
Periodical: | Rural Africana |
Volume: | 21 |
Period: | Winter |
Pages: | 13-30 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Ghana |
Subjects: | women farmers women's work cocoa Development and Technology Economics and Trade Women's Issues |
Abstract: | The author examines the links between lineage-structured economic roles of Ghanaian females and the machination of the global economy. Based on data from the Brong areas of Ghana, she demonstrates how neocolonial economic crisis provides the point at which female cocoa-farmers' access to land and other resources is limited. This article provides a challenge to chose who have seen Ghanaian matrilineal systems as immune to this female exclusion. There is ample documentation provided of the vulnerability of older female cocoa farmers, and of how their daughters become particularly disadvantage in inheriting cocoa farms when compared to sons. The question remains as to what part this female economic deprivation has played in the gradual rural economic decay which Ghana has experienced. The author argues that one solution to Ghana's national economic stability and rural regeneration problem may well be to construct female agricultural cooperatives which can bypass lineage restrictions and the shortage of resources which women often experience. Notes, ref., tab. |