Risky business: Economic uncertainty, market reforms and female livelihoods in Northeast Ghana

Abstract

The author takes two perspectives to analyze the implications of economic uncertainty of women trading and markets. One perspective looks at African women's disempowerment, and the other perspective uses the economic anthropology lens to look at agency and knowledge in the face of unstable markets. These two perspectives bring to surface the important role that women traders play in the structures of local markets, and shows that women manipulate market uncertainty to their benefit. Women traders use three economic strategies to manage market uncertainties; women use different sorts of social networks and bodies of knowledge, ambiguous transactional norms, and a combination of multiple transactional norms. Women tend to be more vulnerable therefore more affected by economic uncertainty; nevertheless they are more knowledgeable about its shifts as a continuum.