Gender and Sustainability: Learning from Women’s Farming in Africa

Tricia Glazebrook and Emmanuela Opoku
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Tricia Glazebrook: School of Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164, USA
Emmanuela Opoku: Department of Environmental Science, University for Development Studies, Navrongo 00000, Ghana

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 24, 1-20

Abstract: Africa was the only continent not to achieve the 2015 Millennium Development Goal of 50% poverty reduction. This paper asks whether Africa will fare better in meeting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) addressing poverty and hunger by 2030. To answer this question, we examine a diverse body of literature and provide relevant longitudinal data collected over 13 years of field research. We find that ‘sustainable development’ is a failed concept immersed in the contemporary global economic system that favors growth over ecosystem stability and international institutions that undervalue women’s capacity for sustainability in their care-work as food providers. We examine barriers to women’s farming (climate change, gender bias, limited access to land, technology, finance) and provide examples of women’s innovative strategies for overcoming barriers in their care practices toward family and community well-being and ecosystem health. We find that Africa will likely repeat past failures without community-level interventions that empower women to achieve SDGs on poverty, hunger, gender equity, and ecosystem management. We uncover similar holistic thinking in women’s agricultural practices and scientific conception of ‘ecosystem services’.

Keywords: sustainability; Sustainable Development Goals; Africa/Ghana; women and gender; agriculture; food security; climate change; capital economics; care labor/logics/practices; ecosystem services (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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