Emancipatory spaces: Opportunities for (re)negotiating gendered subjectivities and enhancing adaptive capacities

Gendered and intersectional inequalities determine differential vulnerabilities to climate change, as well as access to resources and decision making for adaptive actions. Critical scholarly insights demonstrate the roles of power and agency in determining social difference and shaping adaptive capacities across geographical contexts. Framings of resilience and adaptation have shifted to acknowledge and examine these dynamic processes and how they are deliberated and negotiated in practice. We utilise an intersectional subjectivities lens and the notion of ‘negotiated resilience’ as proposed by Harris and colleagues (2018) to assess the inner workings of power and agency in rural Ghanaian farming communities. Specifically, we demonstrate how new entryways for contesting and deliberating power relations can be opened, or conversely closed, within participatory arenas, here during three co-learning workshops on gender and climate change adaptation. Such insights are valuable for researchers and social actors alike to create mindful and practical spaces for (re)negotiating gendered inequalities, as a vital step toward transference into everyday realities. Ultimately, we argue that persistent and collaborative efforts at subverting and (re)negotiating inequitable processes of power in specific contexts is crucial for creating meaningful pathways toward climate justice.