Women as Agents of Change: The Gender Factor to Climate Change and Education Nexus for Improved Livelihoods in Ghana

Abstract

Global research on Climate Change Education (CCE) interventions has emphasized the school-based (formal) sector with little accent on the informal sector and negligible evidence from the global south. Notably, interventions targeting women, who are highly vulnerable to Climate Change (CC) impacts, are largely missing in the literature. This is particularly important for Ghana, where rural women rely on climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture and forestry. This research assessed the critical factors in CCE that can enable rural women farmers build resilient livelihoods. Employing a mixed method approach, a formal questionnaire and a question schedule were used to collect data from a sample of 497 individual respondents and six focus group discussions consisting of Rural Women Farmers (RWF) from two agro-ecological zones. Thirteen expert interviews were also conducted with national and local stakeholders. Quantitative data were analysed using frequencies, percentages, Relative Importance Index, Adaptive Capacity Index, Chi-Square statistic and Binary Regression. Qualitative data were analysed through theme generation and synthesis. In assessing the situational awareness of RWFs, the study projected a disconnect between climate change knowledge and climate actions on the scale of perception (87.0%), comprehension (84.0%) and climate actions – [mitigation (31.0%) and adaptation (79.0%)]. Adaptation actions were found to be temporary and spontaneous rather than planned. Existing individual and systemic factors characterising RWFs, such as low literacy, workloads, high household size, unfavourable land ownership rights and limited access to expert knowledge, influenced the prevailing disconnect. Respondents were also challenged with timely (43.9%), reliable (51.1%), and particularly understandable (64.0%) CC information from various sources. The study found a moderate (0.405) adaptive capacity level for RWFs. It was also revealed that access to capitals by women farmers did not necessarily result in benefit from the capital assets. Access to different climate knowledge sources and climate actions predicted a significant drive on livelihood capitals, indicating appropriate climate knowledge's ability to influence adaptive capacity. Lessons from National and local stakeholders in CCC and CCE provided a guide to what strategies worked. Stakeholders subscribed to identifying personally relevant framing of CC knowledge considering women's unique backgrounds. Hands-on, interactive approaches were encouraged, including user-friendly and local-dialect-sensitive virtual platforms. The absence of proper operational structures and appropriate technical staff coupled with entrenched sociocultural norms limited respondents' ability to build resilience. The existing climate knowledge gaps and critical enablers to CCE from stakeholders were synthesised into a proposed framework for educating rural women farmers on climate change for livelihood resilience. The study concluded by highlighting the role of CCE in building the resilience of RWFs whose roles in reproduction, production and community make them important agents of change. However, systemic factors expressed through access, ownership and control rights of rural women limited their potential. It is therefore recommended that CCE and CCC should be framed taking into consideration the unique context of RWFs. A long-term benefit will be a progressive reconstruction of societal norms that disenfranchise women through multi-stakeholder engagements from the local to National levels.