Levelling the farm fields: A cross-country study of the determinants of gender-based yield gaps

Over the last decade there has been growing global attention to the problem of female farmers lagging in terms of agricultural productivity compared with male farmers. The present study returns to the question of gender-based differences in farm productivity, decomposing differences in farm yields between male and female farmers. We identify one part of the gap explained by differences in attributes and access to productive assets, and another part explained by differences in returns to assets and attributes (i.e. “unexplained” differences). This paper applies the Kitagawa-Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition to gender-based productivity gaps using nationally representative household surveys from 11 developing countries from Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. We estimate productivity models for each country utilizing a comparable set of explanatory assets and attributes. We also implement a comparable decomposition of observed productivity gaps. The cross-country meta-analysis shows that observed total gaps in productivity by gender do not always favor male farmers; the decomposition of these gaps, however, reveals that female farmers generally face gender-specific constraints that manifest as lower returns to attributes and assets.