Wango! Women’s Struggles Amidst Privatised and Extractive Models of Salt Mining in Ghana

Abstract

In this article, we examine the contestations and struggles of women salt miners in Ghana within the context of the increasing  privatisation of commons and enclosures. Using a qualitative approach based on both desk reviews and primary data sources, we situate  the study within the changing models and scales of salt production along Ghana’s eastern coast as driven by development rhetoric. While the State continues to use a development discourse framed around modernisation and productivity to provide an impetus for such  enclosures, the mechanism through which benefits should materialise remains highly contested among different classes and groups of  women and between women, the State, traditional authorities and the private sector. We argue that the women’s demand for access to  the lagoons and salt fields and sustainable mining practices typifies feminist struggles worldwide against capital and patriarchy. The  study also shows that the evolution and class character of the struggles are connected to the divisive roles that the State and traditional  authorities have played in the communities. We conclude that the fragmentation of the grassroots women’s organisations results from  the strategies deployed by the agents of capital and their neoliberal institutions.