Gender differentials on productivity of rice farmers in south western Nigeria: An Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition approach

Abstract

Gender differences in productivity are one of the major obstacles impeding the development of agriculture in Africa and Nigerian particularly. With the Oaxaca-Blinder (OB) and exogenous switching treatment regression (ESTER) models, this study investigates the causes of the productivity differences among 360 sampled rice farmers in Nigeria as well as gender inequality in agricultural productivity. The findings showed that there is an inequalities between men and women, which contributes to a gender productivity gap of almost 29 % in favour of men. As a result, plots managed by women are 29 % less productive than plots handled by men. The analysis of the factors influencing gender variations in production reveals that the endowment component, which accounts for 15 % of the productivity gap, is significantly influenced by marital status, education, farm size, and access to market information. Similarly, the ESTER results show that the rice yield of FHHs would have decreased by 25.41 kg/ha (a 1.02 % reduction) if they had been assigned the same returns to the observed features of MHHs. This difference is significant at the 1 % level. Thus, the findings imply that the FHHs are not at a yield disadvantage when compared to the MHHs. Therefore, it can be said that there are gender productivity disparities in the Nigerian agricultural industry. As such, policy interventions aimed at empowering women must take these disparities into consideration as well as the causes that contribute to them. Overall, the results demonstrate that although policymakers and their development partners can use improved technologies to increase MHH and FHH yields, reducing the difference in market linkages is necessary to close the gender gap in rice productivity and provide FHHs with equal access to the market.