Validating Women’s Voices in West African Agriculture

The Labor Rights Project (LRP) results confirm that women face distinct, often invisible risks that differ from those faced by their male counterparts. Without gender-sensitive reporting channels, these risks remain hidden.

Data from the Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire landscapes reveals that a “gender-blind” approach to due diligence fails to protect female agricultural workers. By implementing a Gender Equity and Social Inclusion (GESI) based programming, gender-disaggregated data collection, and anonymous digital tools, the LRP uncovered critical vulnerabilities.

Gender-Related Issues

The most alarming data point from the project highlights the physical risks specific to women in Ghana’s cocoa sector:

• Health Risks:  One of the most concerning findings was the high rate of chemical exposure among vulnerable women. 47% of women reported health risks associated with applying chemicals while pregnant or breastfeeding, a statistic that highlights a severe gap in health and safety protections. Similarly, in the Ghana palm oil landscape, 49% of women reported the same risk.
• Systemic Inequity: The data confirmed deeply entrenched gender norms that dictate labor. 87% of women suggested systemic disparities in how work is assigned and valued, a figure that rose to 93% in Ghana’s palm oil cooperatives. This division often relegates women to lower-paying roles, with 29% of respondents in Côte d’Ivoire reporting that women are paid less for similar work.
• Harassment and Verbal Abuse: Anonymous reporting provided a safe harbor for women to disclose workplace abuse. 46% of women reported experiencing or witnessing unwanted sexual remarks or physical contact. In Ghana’s palm oil sector, 80% reported experiencing or witnessing rude language or shouting.

Women are Ready to Adopt Digital Tools 

Contrary to the belief that digital tools face adoption barriers among women due to literacy or tech gaps, the project saw robust female participation when the mobile-based tools were accessible and well socialized by local community mobilizers. High engagement was particularly notable in Ghana’s palm oil sector, where women made up the majority of participants (65%).

Qualitative feedback from the project indicated that participating women reported a significant increase in the perception that the workers’ survey and grievance tools reduced their risk exposure by providing a safe channel. The ability to voice concerns anonymously was a primary driver in their willingness to report risks that they would otherwise keep silent about due to fear of retaliation or social stigma.

The Role of Time in Building Trust

Deployment duration was the single most significant variable in system adoption. In Ghana’s cocoa sector, where the platform was live for the longest duration of 14 months, workers reported a 20% reduction in perceived risk levels compared to other landscapes. This extended engagement fostered high levels of trust, with over 70% of both-gender respondents reporting awareness of and comfort using the digital grievance mechanism.

In contrast, the Ghana palm oil and Côte d’Ivoire cocoa sectors experienced shorter implementation windows due to regulatory and logistical delays. Consequently, while workers in these regions expressed a willingness to use the tools, the volume of actionable grievances was lower as users remained in the initial “testing” phase of building trust with the system.

Turning Voices into Action

Despite a lower-than-anticipated number of reports – primarily due to shorter implementation timelines in those sectors – the system demonstrated high efficiency in resolving legitimate issues, proving that digital tools can drive meaningful change for women and their communities. Specifically, we achieved a 61% remediation rate for verified grievances received from the Ghana cocoa sector – a rate considered quite good from an access-to-remediation perspective.

This systemic impact extended beyond individual grievances to resolve high-priority community cases, effectively protecting families and livelihoods. The mechanism successfully flagged and resolved critical issues, including the remediation of a child labor case through collaboration with the Department of Social Welfare and the halting of illegal mining activities that threatened community farmland. For International Women’s Day, these results offer a clear message: when we provide women with safe, gender-sensitive channels to speak up, we do not just hear their concerns – we empower the partnerships necessary to solve them.

About the Labor Rights Project (LRP): Funded by Global Affairs Canada and implemented by Ulula and Proforest Africa, the project deployed digital grievance and survey tools across Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. Over four years (2022–2026), the project aimed to reduce human rights risks – specifically forced and child labor – by enabling anonymous reporting for over 21,000 workers.

Over 1,600 consenting workers participated in the digital surveys across Ghana’s cocoa (35% women and 65% men) and palm oil (65% women and 35% men) sectors, and Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa-producing region (22% women and 78% men).

Read more about the LRP’s findings here.