Gendered Norms, Practices and Livelihoods of Rural Poor Women in Glitame, Ghana.

Increasing poverty is one of the enormous problems the world has been grappling with in recent years, especially that which has to do with rural poverty. This problem is more acute in most developing countries. Ghana is one of the countries in the Sub-Sahara that has also been in the forefront in the fight against poverty. Although, lots of social and economic policies have been put in place to enhance the livelihoods of Ghanaians especially rural women, invisible gender ideologies in rural areas continue to thwart the efforts of policy makers. To ascertain this fact, this study investigated ways in which gendered cultural norms and practices affect the livelihoods of poor rural women in Ghana. The aim of this paper was to investigate the livelihoods of poor rural women, the various norms, practices prevalent in rural areas and ways in which these cultural norms and practices affect the work women engage in, in rural environment. The study identified several livelihoods strategies in which there was a gender divison of labour such as farming, strip cloth weaving/kete weaving, animal rearing, gari processing, collection of firewood for sales, sale of dried peels of cassava and petty trading- vending activities both stationary on table at home in forms of cooked food and vegetables and on a mobile base. It was also established that certain cultural norms and practices play role in rural women’s access to livelihoods such as widowhood rites, fiashidi/trokosi practices, patrilineal inheritance system,yeve and polygamous marriages.These practices have been gendered and do not favor women largely in terms of the kind of work women do. One reason for these present livelihoods of women is due to unequal sharing of productive resources, especially land which is key in the study area. These practices have denied women access to productive resources. Additionally, in observing the various cultural practices such as fiashidi/trokosi, yeve, widowhood rites, the mobility and freedom women need is hindered as social networks and other livelihoods options are missed trapping them in low rank jobs that are not viable reproducing their poverty. This study has also shown that polygamous marriages rather disadvantage and endanger femalechild in these families in their access to productive resources, positioning them with differential livelihood opportunities that are not viable especially in the southern patriarchal societies of Ghana. Despite constraints related to cultural belief systems, the research has shown that women are interested in share cropping, communal farming and informal saving mechanism/susu contribution as self empowering strategies to improve their life chances. Policies need to address gendered cultural norms as well as rural women’s ability to access credit, have good markets and good social networks to fall on in times of shocks and stress to improve their livelihoods so as to enable poor rural women’s possibility for reducing their poverty.