Oil, fish, and livelihoods: Narratives of hydrocarbon benefits and gendered relations in Ghana

Abstract

Oil and gas discovery in Ghana since 2007 has attracted the interest of many international and local actors, including transnational corporations. Despite an expected ‘oil boom’, the industry has perpetuated exclusion and poverty in communities in the neighbourhood of extractive activities in a manner that is particularly gendered, which is a reflection of the enclaved and exclusionary nature of the industry. This paper employs the theoretical framing of feminist political ecology to examine the gendered disparities in the sharing of benefits and access to coping mechanisms. The paper relies on data from fieldwork conducted in Ghana in 2019 to explore how the power and agency of varying stakeholders result in differentiated impacts of the hydrocarbon industry on communities. We present evidence suggesting that gendered inequalities – which are further sustained by entrenched local cultural practices and norms – determine who has access to, manages, and uses resources in a particular context. Considering that the gendered and intersectional impacts of mainstream economies remain poorly understood, this paper contributes to the existing scholarship on both the outcomes of Ghana's hydrocarbon industry and feminist political ecology theorizing.