ISSN: 2578-4994
Authors: Divine Odame Appiah*, Ismail O Azeez and Lois Antwi Boadi
Smallholder farmers may or may not have access to resources they may need for sustainable cultivation. With climate variability differential impacts, farmers may adopt measures on the farm and off the farm to better cope with the effects of climate variability. This paper examines the gendered differential responses to climate variability in the Offinso Municipality in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. Using a sample of 300 respondents from six farming communities, primary data was collected and analyzed with the use contingency tables, frequencies and chi-square tests of association in the SPSS v.16 for Windows applications. Results indicated that both sexes demonstrated different levels of knowledge of climate variability and adopted different strategies to better adapt to the effects of climate variability per their social constructs. The on-farm adaptation methods were similar but the off-farm adaptation measures differed; as the women did not earn higher incomes compared to their male counterparts, who had better alternative income earning avenues than their female counterparts. Women’s access to and control of productive resources such as land should be enhanced at par with their male counterparts.
Keywords: Gendered Responses; On-Farm; Off-Farm; Climate Variability; Offinso; Ghana
