Ghana's export trends between 2012 and 2017 Gold Crude petroleum Cocoa beans Refined petroleum Coconuts Brazil nuts and cashew nuts stress on social infrastructure (Eduful and Hooper 2015). To the coastal communities in the Western Region, these challenges are an everyday reminder of their disenfranchisement from oil wealth (Osei-Tutu 2012). Livelihoods of women in Ghana"s coastal communities represent a category of the different micro-economic levels of deprivation from oil benefits (Chalfin 2018). The impetus for this study is to build on existing scholarship on oil and gas in Ghana. Many of these tend to focus on explaining different dimensions of the resource curse (e.g., Siakwah 2017; Debra and Graham 2015; Graham et al. 2016; Obeng-Odoom 2013). At this point, only a few studies have attempted to examine the gender disparities embedded in the oil-livelihoods nexus in Ghana (Adusah-Karikari 2015; Overå 2017; Boohene and Peprah 2011). According to Boohene and Peprah (2011), coastal women"s livelihoods are dependent on the ocean and are increasingly becoming vulnerable to diminishing ocean space and fish stocks which is attributed to oil extraction. Adusah-Karikari (2015) adds that while women"s spaces for generating livelihoods are diminishing, women are left without the benefit of alternative options. The thesis builds upon such studies. 1.2. Research Problem, Aims and Objectives This research focuses on Ghana"s Western Coastal Region. The Western Region is endowed with a vast amount of natural resources in comparison to the rest of the country. The region is the largest producer of cocoa, rubber, coconut and palm oil. Agriculture, therefore, accounts for 58.1% of employment in western Ghana (Boohene and Peprah 2011). The region also has rich forest resources, the largest concentration of gold mines in the country, and the only active bauxite and manganese mines of Ghana. For decades, the region has greatly contributed to the country"s national prosperity through revenues generated from natural resource extraction. It