Gender differences in agricultural productivity: evidence from maize farm households in southern Ethiopia

Girma Gezimu Gebre,Hisako Nomura,Yuichiro Amekawa,Dil Bahadur Rahut,Hiroshi Isoda

doi:10.1007/s10708-019-10098-y

Abstract

This study examines the impact of gender differences on maize productivity in Dawuro Zone, southern Ethiopia. Our study addressed the limitations of the previous studies in two ways. First, the study separately assessed gender differences in productivity between de facto female-headed households and de jure female-headed households and revealed that female-headed households are not homogenous. Second, the study separately examined the impacts of the covariates on male-headed households and female-headed households using an exogenous switching treatment effect model. We find the existence of gender differences in maize productivity between male-headed households and female-headed households. The maize productivity of male-headed households was overall 44.3% higher than that of female-headed households. However, if female-headed households received the same return on their resources as male-headed households, their productivity would increase by 42.3%. This suggests agricultural policy should target female-headed households to help reduce the productivity gap between male-headed households and female-headed households. Finally, the distributions of the gender differentials between male-headed households and female-headed households are more pronounced at mid-levels of productivity.

Highlights

Agricultural productivity, in general, is low in many sub-Saharan African countries where most farmers are smallholders
This study reveals significant gender disparities in maize productivity in Ethiopia by applying the exogenous switching treatment regression approach for measuring production efficiency
This study separately examined the impacts of the covariates on MHHs and female-headed households (FHHs)

Summary

Introduction

Agricultural productivity, in general, is low in many sub-Saharan African countries where most farmers are smallholders. It is even lower for female farmers, who comprise 50% of the agricultural labor force in the region (FAO 2011b). They can largely be divided into two categories: (a) households headed by women who are not married, are divorced or widowed (de jure FHHs) and (b) women whose spouses are away from home because of work or other reasons (de facto FHHs). The main reasons for the increase in the number of female-headed households are the migration of men away from rural areas to seek jobs elsewhere, widowhood, divorce, and other family disruptions (FAO 2011b; Kassie et al 2014)

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Conclusion