Netright demands gender-responsive budgeting

The Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT) has called on the government to adopt stronger gender-responsive fiscal policies to address structural inequalities in the country’s national budgets.

It says the 2026 budget does not adequately address the realities and economic needs of women, particularly those engaged in agriculture, unpaid care work and the informal sector saying although the budget outlined broad commitments to inclusive growth and economic transformation, many of the policies remained gender-neutral in language and implementation, thereby masking deep structural inequalities affecting women and vulnerable groups.

Presenting findings from NETRIGHT’s gender analysis of the 2026 Budget at a policy dialogue in Accra, academics and gender advocates said women continued to face systemic barriers to land ownership, access to agricultural inputs, financing, mechanisation, extension services and markets despite constituting a significant share of Ghana’s agricultural workforce.

The speakers further argued that the country’s budgeting processes often focused on broad national targets without disaggregating beneficiaries by gender, disability status or geographical location, making it difficult to determine whether women and vulnerable populations were benefiting from public expenditure.

Structural barriers

Speaking at the dialogue last Tuesday, a gender and agricultural policy consultant, Nana Ama Aning Opong-Duah, said many agricultural interventions continued to overlook structural barriers that excluded women from meaningful participation in the sector.

She explained that women farmers often lacked ownership and long-term access to land, particularly for tree crops such as cashew and oil palm, which generated substantial income for households.

She added that while government programmes such as the Feed Ghana Programme and aspects of the 24-hour economy initiative had ambitious agricultural targets, the budget failed to provide sufficient details on how women and vulnerable groups would specifically benefit.

The consultant added that previous interventions, including the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) programme, reached only a limited number of women, with studies indicating that only about 30 per cent of female farmers benefited from input support.

Ms Opong-Duah stressed that the use of gender-neutral terms such as “farmers” in policy documents concealed inequalities because they failed to show which categories of farmers benefited from interventions.

Care economy

For her part, a lecturer and researcher, Dr Faustina Obeng Adomaa, also raised concerns about the country’s care economy, arguing that unpaid care work performed largely by women remained invisible and undervalued in national economic planning.

She explained that care work included childcare, cooking, cleaning, fetching water, caring for the sick, elderly persons and persons with disabilities, all of which sustained households and society.

Dr Adomaa said although care work contributed significantly to social reproduction and economic productivity, it was rarely captured in economic analysis because it was unpaid and difficult to quantify.

Taxation, inequality

Also, a lecturer at the Department of Economics of the University of Ghana, Dr Gloria Afful-Mensah, said taxation policies should not be viewed only as tools for revenue mobilisation but also as instruments for addressing gender inequalities.

She explained that Ghana’s dependence on domestic taxation had increased over the years because of declining external aid and rising debt servicing obligations.

Dr Afful-Mensah said although the 2026 Budget introduced no major new taxes, reforms such as the upward adjustment of the VAT registration threshold from GH¢200,000 to GH¢750,000 could benefit many small and medium-sized enterprises dominated by women.

However, she argued that the budget’s fiscal objectives lacked explicit gender-sensitive targets and indicators, making it difficult to evaluate whether tax and expenditure policies were contributing to inclusive growth.