Challenging Gender Orders? Small Ruminant Husbandry Interventions in Ghana’s Upper West Region

Abstract

This paper undertakes an institutional analysis to determine how rules, regulations, and norms guiding gender relations in four  institutions - the state, market, community, and households - were affected by an intervention designed to increase women’s ownership  of small ruminants in Ghana’s Upper West Region. Drawing on information from case farmers and key persons through structured  individual interviews and focus group discussions, the paper notes that some existing norms and rules were challenged at the household  and community levels. First was the norm of household heads being the automatic target of interventions. Women’s involvement in the  intervention increased their livestock asset base, challenging the rule that set men as dominant owners. The intervention drew more  women to seek solutions to livestock health problems and even encouraged females to deliver health care to small ruminants. The changes in rules and norms, however, did not extend to all small ruminant production activities. Males retained the hold over animal  sales and critical spaces in decision-making in all the critical stages of the intervention; they set the rules and ensured enforcement.  Women still needed their husbands’ permission to offer services to other farmers, especially men. Targeting women in agriculture  production can initiate some alterations in gender relations, particularly in the area of resource ownership. The extent to which these can alter crucial markers of women’s subordinate positions however requires the systematic engagement of institutional rules and norms  that support unequal gender relations.