Description
As the world climate dilemma increasingly reshapes agricultural systems, International Studies are being confronted with critical questions like: can governance and development models remain credible without embedding gendered power relations at their core? This research responds to this issues by empirically examining the nexus between gender-inclusive governance, women’s economic empowerment, and climate-resilient agriculture across ten Sub-Saharan African countries (2005–2024). Anchored in Participatory Governance Theory and Feminist Political Ecology, the examination moves beyond traditional state-centric or growth-centred paradigms to foreground the political economy of gendered adaptation. Employing the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) ARDL estimator, the study reveals asymmetric short-run and long-run relationships that exist among governance quality, women’s empowerment indicators (legal rights, school enrolment, and labour participation), and climate-resilient agricultural outcomes. The results reveal that women’s legal rights and economic participation significantly strengthen climate resilience in the short run, while female educational inclusion exerts the better positive influence in the long run. However, the results also reveal structural contradictions food security gains do not automatically translate into resilient systems especially when gendered access to resources remains unequal.
Keywords: Gender-inclusive governance; Women’s empowerment; Climate resilience; feminist political ecology; Sustainable Development Goals.
