Can employment empower women? Female workers in the pineapple sector in Ghana

Abstract

The transformation of global agri-food systems has led to the increased establishment of export-oriented horticultural plantations in developing countries. These labor intense production sites are associated with feminized employment patterns and therefore can provide more paid work opportunities for women in rural areas. The social implications of these developments for women's empowerment remain hardly understood; which is why we investigate empowerment among female workers in the pineapple sector in Ghana, in this paper. Our data set contains primary survey data of 420 married households in Ghana, living in areas of large-scale pineapple plantations. We apply entropy balancing, a new re-weighting technique, and combine this with regression analysis. Our regression results show that female employment has a statistically significant and positive effect on overall household income, female income share, female income and asset ownership and a negative effect on female reproductive workload. We also assess the effect of sole male employment and find that it has a negative effect on female household income share, female income and the female spouse's ability to sell assets and a positive effect on reproductive workload. Neither female nor male employment alone but only joint horticultural employment of both spouses seems to lead to female spouses having more input into household decision-making. Our findings for the pineapple sector in Ghana suggest that large-scale, export-oriented horticultural plantations can contribute to women's empowerment through employment creation for both male and female workers. • Horticultural production sites provide jobs in rural areas, particularly for women. • Female horticultural employment has a positive effect on female economic resources. • Male horticultural employment has a negative effect on female economic resources. • Only joint employment leads to more household decision-making for women.