Researchers support efforts to increase the agricultural productivity of women in Malawi

Despite the increasing recognition of women’s contribution to agricultural production, there are still factors limiting their agricultural productivity. It is widely known that male farmers have more access to productive assets and support services than female farmers. Hence, gender gaps in access to non-land agricultural input, technology, and extension services create noticeable differences in productivity between women and men in low-income countries. Women contributed to agricultural production through plantain farming.

To understand the gender differences in adopting improved technologies and agricultural productivity, gender researchers from IITA–CGIAR conducted a study in Malawi using nationally representative data collected from 1600 households and 5238 plots. The team led by Adane Tufa, Agricultural Economist at IITA Malawi, used a multivariate probit model to analyze the gender differences in the adoption of improved technologies, including intercropping, use of improved varieties, crop rotation and residue retention, manure use, and minimum tillage. They also analyzed the gender differences in agricultural productivity, using an exogenous switching regression (ESR) model and recentered influence function decomposition.

The study revealed that female plot managers were more likely to adopt intercropping due to their preferences for producing diverse crops used for home consumption. Women’s contributions in carrying out other productive work, including multiple domestic and caregiving tasks, made intercropping an attractive technology for uptake by women in Malawi, as it reduces the need for weed control. However, male plot managers were more likely to use improved varieties and adopt crop rotation and crop residue retention.

The result also showed that productivity was lower for female plot managers than for male plot managers. This may be due to differences in access to assets and technologies and differences in labor productivity for male and female farmers. The gender productivity gap result also indicated that female plot managers have a relatively low endowment advantage of 8.2% and a much greater structural disadvantage of 23.1% than male plot managers. The researchers suggested that even if female and male plot managers have the same amount of resources, other unmeasured differences hinder women from making the best use of their resources.

The research recommended that efforts to close the gender productivity gap should go beyond creating equal access to resources to facilitating women’s empowerment for comparable productivity outcomes. These efforts should demand that policies and programs use gender-transformative approaches to enhance women’s decision-making and negotiation skills. It should also address the gender norms and power relations that restrict women from utilizing and benefiting from the resources they could access.