How does the gender gap in agricultural productivity occur and why?

Gender gap occur in agricultural productivity because there are consistent gender disparities in access to and benefits from agricultural proceeds and assets such as tangible and non-tangible agricultural assets such as land, new agricultural technologies and are less likely to use agricultural inputs. This is because of lack of money to access assets such as non-family land. These constraints set limitations on the depth of involvement of women in agricultural production and practices. Men made decisions on the allocation of type of land, type of crops to grow and could easily reclaim land given to spouses especially if such land is seen to be very fertile. There is power imbalance in decision making over assets the agricultural household perpetrated by culture, local customs and religion beliefs where women are seen as supportive farm hands (not recognized as ‘serious’ farmers), providing cheap agricultural family labour with little or no remuneration. The identity of who a farmer is by researchers, agricultural extension agents and farmers themselves constitutes wrong interpretation of gender to be a feminist concept and therefore misinterpretation on who constitute, who should benefit or can be identified as a farmer is positively skewed to men.

Ownership and control of agricultural assets is positively skewed to men who make final decisions on assets owned by women and those jointly owned due to culture, inability to be formally educated (women) and religion misinterpretations.

Women are considered as economic asset by spouse in farm households and only have right of use and negotiation privileges over agricultural assets and give most credence to the household heads (men). Societal expectations and beliefs is that a woman admitting and ceding ownership and control of resources to her spouse is securing the future of her children (male) who will later inherit the agricultural assets. Men have access to extension services on crops that have economic and commercial importance and women have access to information on domestic issues. Men owned mechanized farm implements and women owned simple and local implements such as hoes and cutlasses.

Continued promotion of subsistence agriculture for women famers in African regions is giving wrong impression that smallholder farmers of which women are in the majority is wrong and perpetrating poverty and feeling of helplessness. Most times, agricultural extension messages are packaged with different contents for men and women. Men are particularly taught on cash crops and women on food crops. Women are mostly not given options to choose preferred crops to cultivate. Also, women farmers do not benefit fully from existing channels for technology dissemination particularly when access to these channels conflict with their household responsibilities.

There is little resultant change or support from the mainstream agricultural advisory services for women compared to the gender specific agricultural services received by men. The need to develop suitable extension services that is gender specific and tailored to women farmers cannot be over emphasized. Success stories of women farmers who have used their environmental conditions to overcome poverty are rarely captured or documented. These players are not given incentives at the grassroots to share their success stories and mentor other smallholder farmers.

Women’s role in agriculture has increased but they have strong constraint to develop into large scale production or key totally into and benefit maximally from opportunities that agricultural formalized markets offer. Over the last few decades, women have broadened and deepened their involvement in agriculture in many developing countries. They increasingly shoulder the responsibility for household survival and respond to economic opportunities in commercial agriculture with many constraints. This happens as rapid changes in the agricultural sector in many parts of the world makes smallholder production less viable and men therefore to a high degree, migrate into other sectors and away from the rural areas, leaving women to take responsibility for the farms and take over also men’s tasks such as land preparation and cash crop production. However, as this is happening and changing the roles of women in agriculture rapidly; there have been almost no changes in the women’s access to agricultural services, credits, inputs and technologies and the result is therefore re-enforcing the problems of low productivity and difficulty in producing adequate food on the smallholder farms.

There is gender gap in participation in and benefits from agricultural markets. Though, women participate in agricultural markets, they are more prominent in the local and informal markets where prices of agricultural produce are controlled and dictate by market forces. The volume of traded goods at local and doorsteps markets are not large enough to make meaningful impact for women compared to the volume of sale made by their male counterparts who have better access to information on prices and marketing systems through their intensive marketing networks in formal and contractual markets at domestic, regional and international markets where prices are stable, better negotiated and formalized. Women also lack important information on prices for marketing systems which is often provided by extension agents who have little more interactions with men more than women.

Again, men and women are impacted differently by technologies and other interventions: Many agricultural projects still fail to consider the basic questions of differences in the resources, status of men and women, their roles and responsibilities and the potential impacts of interventions on these. Often there is an assumption that as long as there are improved technologies or interventions, they will benefit men and women equally when in fact they are usually not. Men and women are also impacted differently by and have a role to play in managing emerging threats, shocks and seasonality such as climate change, family members getting sick and women need to stay back to nurse them to good health rather than working in their farms and urban-rural migration that takes men away from farming to a more formal and diversified incoming generating livelihood opportunities (this leaves women to be overworked and heavily burdened with multi-tasks on and off-farm to cater for the household alone)that may result into backlash for women and others.

Also, men are not seen as strong and partners for advocacy or those who will start challenging societal orthodoxies in gender gap. They are presently seen as strange bed fellows. It is not enough to empower women, the question at the back of our minds is to ask that who owns and controls the owner of the wallet (in African context), are men involved, considered and carried along at the grass roots to help narrow gender gap?! This consideration could mean a win-win situation for projects and interventions where transformative approach of players playing together and proffering answers to how problems can be solved is ensured.