Gender Production Networks: Sustaining Cocoa-Chocolate Sourcing in Ghana and India

Abstract

Transformation of global sourcing over recent decades has significant implications for gender relations of production in the developing world. Analysis of global production networks and value chains (GPN/GVC) provides important insights into the changing dynamics of global sourcing and its embeddedness within diverse societies and countries. However, the gender dimension of this process is often overlooked. Feminist analysis provides important insights into a changing gender division of labour within global production, but rarely links it to the commercial dynamics of GPN/GVCs. This paper develops a gender production network analysis to inform a comparative examination of gender production relations in cocoa. It draws on case studies in Ghana and India. It asks in what ways are GPN/GVCs bearers of gender transformation, and what are the implications for the sustainability of quality cocoa sourcing by chocolate manufacturers? The paper finds that gendered social norms and practices in both countries mean that women's contribution to cocoa production has long been undervalued, with women largely relegated to the position of unpaid family or casual labour. However, within the gender division of labour women do play an important role in certain activities that are increasingly recognised in the industry as critical to ensuring good yields and quality production. These are of increasing importance to consumer-focused brand name chocolate companies. Recognition and support for women's role could make an important contribution, both to the empowerment of women cocoa farmers and workers, but also to the future sustainability of quality cocoa sourcing.

Agricultural Information's Impact on the Adaptive Capacity of Ghana's Smallholder Cocoa Farmers

“…Since an overriding objective was to decipher how information imparted to Ghana's cocoa smallholders influences their response to drought, and influences their adaptive capacity, we sampled purposively to conduct semi-structured interviews with smallholders associated with the following approaches of delivering agricultural information: By examining four distinct groups of Ghanaian cocoa farmers, we aim to depict dynamic sectoral adaptation across much of Ghana's cocoa-growing system and account for the heterogeneity of Ghana's cocoa farmers with respect to their socioeconomic status and their access to agricultural information. Since female farmers have long been disadvantaged in Ghanaian cocoa cultivation (e.g., Oppong et al, 1975;Quisumbing, 1996;Quisumbing et al, 2001;Baffoe-Asare et al, 2013;Barrientos, 2013;Marston, 2016;Friedman et al, 2018), we set out to examine how female farmers fared in their adaptation to drought. As in many economicallydeveloping agrarian communities, Ghanaian women are systematically disadvantaged since they are generally expected to perform most domestic chores as well as carry out farm labor, and they typically hold fewer land titles (Asaaga and Hirons, 2019).…”

“…Extreme weather events notwithstanding, cocoa farmers are also rendered vulnerable by socio-economic and market forces, such as: decline of available land (Ruf and Zadi, 1998;Amanor, 2010;Carr and Lockwood, 2011;Hirons et al, 2018b); soil degradation (Dawoe et al, 2014); corruption in cocoa marketing (Peprah, 2015); cocoa's boom and bust cycles (Ruf and Siswoputranto, 1995;Ruf and Schroth, 2004;Clough et al, 2009); financial exclusion (Zeitlin, 2006;McKinley et al, 2014); poverty (Appiah, 2004;Hirons et al, 2018c); or by virtue of being born female (Oppong et al, 1975;Quisumbing, 1996;Quisumbing et al, 2001;Baffoe-Asare et al, 2013;Barrientos, 2013;Marston, 2016;Friedman et al, 2018). Against this background, this paper studies how Ghanaian cocoa farmers bore the impacts of the 2015-16's prolonged, El Niño-induced drought.…”

Empowering Women Through Corporate Social Responsibility: A Feminist Foucauldian Critique

“…The low numbers of female cocoa landowners belie the findings of my case study, and many others (see Barrientos & Bobie, 2016), which show that women perform nearly half of all cocoa work required on farms. Yet women farmers face challenges in terms of getting access to land, fertilisers, pesticides, training, loans, and labour (Barrientos, 2013;Barrientos & Bobie, 2016).…”

Landscapes of Social Inclusion: Inclusive Value-Chain Collaboration Through the Lenses of Food Sovereignty and Landscape Governance

“…Neither are innovation platforms neutral regarding who is targeted or reached (Pyburn, 2014). Younger and female farmers and those with fewer assets tend to be excluded because of a blindness to the diversity of the very same poor (Barrientos, 2013;IFAD, 2013b;Pyburn, 2014). This raises the question of why one should embark on research into inclusive VCC while there is so much evidence of adverse effects and exclusion.…”