Gender, Food and ‘The Right to the City’ in the Ghanaian Marketplace

Abstract

This article combines ethnographic fieldwork in Cape Coast's Kotokuraba Market with theories of ‘the right to the city’ and historical literature on gender and space in West Africa to highlight the connections between women's food labour and the social production of market space in Ghana. In identifying two critical moments from Ghana's history that exemplify the influence of economic policy on the gender arrangement of the marketplace, this article argues that although women have historically dominated Ghana's public marketplaces, their ‘right to the city’ – the collective and individual rights to determine the form and function of market space – remains out of reach.