Abstract
AbstractMany stylized facts about women in agriculture have been repeated for decades. Did nothing really change? Is some of this conventional wisdom simply maintained over time, or has it always been inaccurate? We use four rounds of cross‐sectional data from Ghana to assess some of the facts and to evaluate whether gender patterns have changed over time. We focus on five main themes: land, cropping patterns, market participation, agricultural inputs, and employment. We add to the literature by showing new facts and evidence for more than 20 years. Results show that stylized facts do not always hold, and that some of these “facts” change over time. We find significant variation in the extent of (changes in) gender discrepancies across themes, different agro‐ecological zones, ethnicities, household types, and women's role in the household.
Highlights
Concerns about gender inequality were already voiced in the 1980s
Did nothing really change? Is some of this conventional wisdom maintained over time, or has it always been inaccurate? We use longitudinal data from Ghana to assess some of the facts and to evaluate whether gender patterns have changed over time
We descriptively explore how the index has changed during the 20-year time period and conduct a regression analysis to explore how gender, time, and agroecological zones correlate with the different occupational choices
Summary
Concerns about gender inequality were already voiced in the 1980s. Still today, these same concerns are expressed with respect to gender differences, women’s access to and control of resources, and similar issues such as women’s empowerment. A 2015 special issue of Agricultural Economics explores the drivers of gender differences in land productivity by using new data from the Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA). Solid studies based on reliable time data are fundamental to indicate whether reality still corresponds to the common wisdom as well as to inform policy makers about drivers of and obstacles to development (Deininger, Savastano, and Xia forthcoming). This is especially important in countries undergoing rapid economic and social change and for traditionally more vulnerable groups that can be highly affected by these changes. The forest and coastal zones are characterized by a bimodal rainfall pattern that results in a major and a minor growing season
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