Gender differences in agricultural productivity: Puzzling evidence from West Africa

Abstract

Gender norms, institutional constraints, and gender disparities in regards to the access to production factors persist and undermine agricultural growth in developing countries. There is limited evidence regarding the comprehensive gender productivity gap across crops and countries after controlling for the gender disparities in access to productive resources. This study analyzes the gender gap in agricultural productivity in West Africa. We use a nationally representative data, which was collected from a large household sample size in eight countries using harmonized survey instruments. This analysis uses the recentered influence function. We also account for the crop and country specificities in West Africa. We find that female farmers have productivity advantages in pulses and disadvantages in cereals and cotton. Moreover, our results show that these gender differences are higher in Sahelian countries than in coastal countries, and decrease in cereals and increase in pulses along the productivity distribution. Furthermore, we also find that the structural component is the primary driver of the gender productivity gap, underscoring the importance of the returns on resources. Our study contributes to the literature by providing evidence that a comprehensive analysis can decipher the multidirectional gender productivity gap across crops and go beyond a usually aggregated female disadvantage. The findings are of great interest to policies and regional agricultural programs. They highlight disparities in the gender gap across subregions and show that this gap is a crop-level phenomenon, rendering the conventional farmer-level analysis insufficient. This study emphasizes the need to further elucidate the factors explaining the gender structural disadvantages in West Africa to improve agricultural productivity and gender equity and reduce poverty.