Closing gender gaps in productivity to advance gender equality and women's empowerment

Abstract

In this paper we review research studies on gender-based productivity gaps in agriculture with an objective of assessing the nature of evidence since the wide-ranging productivity gaps reported in the SOFA 2010–2011 of FAO. Broadly, we address two questions. One, what are the trends in and extent of current gender gaps in productivity? Two, what has worked and what has not worked in bridging the gaps? We also critically examine the conceptualization of gender productivity gaps, including the measures of productivity, units of analysis and methods of estimating gaps. We find that recent studies offer more nuanced evidence on gender productivity gaps, which estimate gaps at the plot level and show heterogeneity in gaps across crops, productivity distribution, and regionally within countries. They show significant gender gaps, which vary between four and 28 percent, persisting across countries though temporal trends are difficult to infer due to methodological differences. There is less but mixed evidence on the impact of interventions in bridging gender productivity gaps, even when they improve productivity in general