Gendered spaces and entanglements: analysis of fisher couples’ decision-making and practices in Ghana’s Western region

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine the agentic role of the physical spaces (e.g. landing beach, fish market and fish processing kitchen) within which fishery tasks are undertaken as they entangle with human, non-human, and discursive forces to co-create gendered subjectivities in fisher couples’ decision-making and practices. The paper is based on larger ethnographic study on fisher couples’ decision-making and practices in Ghana’s Western region, using participatory ethnographic observation including photo elicitation, vignettes and 38 in-depth interviews. Findings from the study indicate that the fish landing beach (consisting of sea water and sandy coast) played active roles in the kinds of tasks men and women could perform. The ability of the sea water to wet women’s long dresses, coupled with their menstrual body and discourse of women as unclean worked together to limit women’s ability to engage in activities, such as fishing. In terms of fish processing and trading, the study showed that the enclosed nature of fish processing kitchen served as a protective force which prevented public scrutiny of couples’ household practices to allow for husbands to help their wives in fish processing and storage. In instances of disagreement, the bedroom played a protective role where couples settled their differences on somewhat equal ground. Tracing the agentic and constitutive role of spaces, shift our focus from a purely social understanding of gender towards a holistic view of the multiple and complex pathways through which the environment and matter combine with discourses to co-create continuous and flexible (re)iterations of gender emergences.