Men's crops and women's crops: The importance of gender to the understanding of agricultural and development outcomes in Ghana's Central Region

The study of gender and development is an area of inquiry fraught with tension between theoretical and practical concerns. This article seeks to intervene in the standoff between these concerns by examining the mismatch between the conclusions one can draw about gendered patterns of agriculture in Ghana if one adopts either a mainstream or a feminist post-structuralist approach to gender. By illustrating the ways in which mainstream approaches to gender and development conceal important variability in the vulnerabilities experienced by those often lumped into the categories of woman and man, this examination shows how contemporary writing on gender and development might inform practical development efforts in a manner that results in measurably improved project outcomes. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.