Understanding the Complexities Surrounding Gender Differences in Agricultural Productivity in Nigeria and Uganda

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index

“…Peterman et al (2011) show that using headship as a proxy for gender differences within households may also lead to underestimation of gender differences in agricultural productivity. Efforts to increase women's assets may succeed, but without measuring changes in men's assets, we know nothing about gender asset inequality.…”

Gendered Perceptions of Land Ownership and Agricultural Decision-making in Ecuador: Who Are the Farm Managers?

“…Controlling for access to resources and other characteristics, female heads are less likely to adopt inorganic fertilizer than male heads; when the same analysis is carried out based on the sex of the farmer, there are no significant gender differences in the adoption of inorganic fertilizer or improved seed. Peterman et al (2011) are highly critical of previous studies on productivity that take headship as the gender indicator for oversimplifying both complex family structures and the diverse multicrop farming systems in subSaharan Africa. They point out that the same crop may be grown by men and women independently in the same household as well as jointly by them.…”

“…They carried out a sensitivity analysis of various potential indicators for gender-including headship, who claims ownership of the crops, the share of land managed by women, and household structure-and found that none were consistently significant across regressions. They conclude that "gender differences in agricultural productivity may not be revealed at higher levels of aggregation that do not correspond to the basic decision-making unit in specific farming systems" (Peterman et al 2011(Peterman et al , 1500. In other words, it matters who is making specific decisions on each plot.…”

Gender gap in agricultural productivity in Nigeria: A commodity level analysis

“…The World Bank and the United Nations warn that the "failure to recognize the [gender] roles, differences and inequities pose a serious threat to the effectiveness of the agricultural development agenda" (World Bank, FAO, IFAD, 2009). African Development Bank (2015) also acknowledges that the increased integration to be that female farmers have lower yields than their male counterparts largely due to differentiated: (i) access and use of agricultural inputs and land, (ii) market and credit market access, (iii) labour market discriminations in terms of off-farm wages, (iv) institutional and cultural contraints, v) physical and human capital (Peterman et al, 2011a; Palacios- Lopez and Lopez, 2014). However, many of the past studies in the literature assessing the gender disparities in agricultural productivity are fraught with conceptual and methodological flaws in assessing gender differences in agricultural productivity.…”