IFPRI CGIAR
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What we do

With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

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researcher spotlight

Samuel Benin

Samuel Benin is the Acting Director for Africa in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit. He conducts research on national strategies and public investment for accelerating food systems transformation in Africa and provides analytical support to the African Union’s CAADP Biennial Review.

Where we work

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Where we work

IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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Research by country and region

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Closing gender gaps in agriculture

  • Women play important and varied roles in agriculture, but they are constrained by two important types of gender gaps: women have unequal access, relative to men, to productive resources, and there is insufficient information about the roles and resources of women and men. Closing these gender gaps would be good both for women and for agriculture (eds Quisumbing et al 2014).
  • In a critical review of recent efforts to increase poor female farmers’ access to and control over productive resources, Quisumbing and Pandolfelli (2010) identify key strategies to address gender-based constraints in accessing productive resources and highlight promising approaches tested in the field.
  • Peterman et al (2011) investigate the puzzle of gender differences in agricultural productivity in Nigeria and Uganda and find persistent lower productivity on female-owned plots and among female-headed households. However, results depend on aggregation of gender indicator, crop-specific samples, agro- ecological zone and biophysical characteristics, which point to need for better data to unpack productivity gaps.
  • Evidence from a review of micro-level studies on gender differences in access, adoption and use of non- land agricultural inputs globally in the last 10 years indicates that among technological, natural and human resources, women are consistently disadvantaged (Peterman et al (2015).
  • In Ethiopia, production models did not show significance of access to extension services in affecting farm productivity, but it is the perceived usefulness of those services that statistically explains variation in farm productivity of both female and male heads of households. Quality extension service is significant in explaining female household heads’ productivity in barley, fruits and vegetables production and in explaining male heads’ productivity in teff, maize, enset and permanent crops (Ragasa et al 2013).
  • Women farmers are more receptive to women communicators. Training and leveraging key women in the community is more likely to lead other women to adopt conservation agriculture than training key men in the community to transfer their knowledge (Klondylis et al 2014)
  • Addressing gender in agricultural research requires moving beyond a focus on productivity, toward a broader view of agricultural and food systems that recognizes women’s priorities and distinct role in ensuring the food security of their households (Meinzen-Dick et al 2011).
  • The implementation modality of agricultural interventions also matters: agricultural interventions disseminated through women’s groups in Bangladesh did better in the long-run to build women’s assets and improve women’s and children’ nutrition than those interventions targeted to households, and by default, men, even if income gains were larger in the household-targeted interventions (Kumar and Quisumbing, 2011; Quisumbing and Kumar, 2011).