Gendered experience of poverty and vulnerability : Analysing the situation of peasant women and their livelihood strategies to household food insecurity in Savelugu-Nanton district, Northern Ghana

Gendered poverty and food insecurity is widespread in sub-Saharan Africa, and this is particularly marked in northern Ghana for several decades. The overall objective of the study was to determine how the interaction of customary norms, gender, power, and weak governance contribute or reinforce the process, causes and experiences of peasant women’s vulnerability to household food insecurity in three study villages in Savelugu-Nanton District, northern Ghana. The study analyses how the peasant women cope or adapt to the risk of household food insecurity through a portfolio of activities, and the extent to which the Ghana LEAP program impacted on the well-being or livelihoods of the poor women. Mixed method design (involving both qualitative and quantitative data) was used as the methodological framework to guide in the data collection, and content analysis was applied in the discussions of the results and findings. The study finds that factors such as lack of income, low assets, lack of opportunities, lack of skills and expertise, skewed and insecure land tenure, and inadequate access lead to the process, causes and experiences of the women’ vulnerability. These factors were found to be reinforced or perpetuated by the interaction of customary norms, gender, power and weak governance which are deeply immersed gendered power inequality in the country. The paper also discovers that the peasant women are not a homogenous entity who are pursuing the same livelihood activities. They are made up of a diverse group with differential vulnerability, and advice policymakers and governments to avoid treating them as a homogenous entity and target the poorest group among them to support them with insurance and safety nets to enhance their productivity. Similarly, the impact of the Ghana LEAP program on the well-being of the poor women was found to be insignificant as a result of a multiplicity of factors such as lack of political will, nepotism, and patronage and client relation of program delivery, wrong targeting, and gender inequality in service delivery.