From negotiated to covert: married women’s agency in staple crop value chains in Kenya, Ghana, South Africa and Uganda

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines married women’s agency in marketing and income use for staple crops grown on jointly held fields in four African countries: cowpea in Ghana, maize in South Africa and Kenya, and matooke banana in Uganda. The article is based on a series of workshops in each country in which small-scale farmers participated in focus group discussions and a participatory mapping of value chains. Our results show that in Ghana and South Africa, wives exercise agency through acknowledging and appealing to their husbands’ authority, using their roles as custodians of income to shape expenditure, and relying on non-confrontational persuasion. In Kenya and Uganda, women withdraw their labour, hide crops, and redirect their energy to marketing crops grown on separate fields. These findings demonstrate the multiple and complex ways married women exercise agency in the domains of marketing and income use.