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Gender discrimination and its impact on income, productivity, and technical efficiency: evidence from Benin

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Abstract

This paper examines the occurrence and impact of gender discrimination in access to production resources on the income, productivity, and technical efficiency of farmers. Through an empirical investigation of farmers from Koussin-Lélé, a semi-collective irrigated rice scheme in central Benin, we find that female rice farmers are particularly discriminated against with regard to scheme membership and access to land and equipment, resulting in significant negative impacts on their productivity and income. Although women have lower productivity, they are as technically efficient as men. The findings suggest that there is considerable scope for improving the productivity of women through increasing their access to production resources.

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Notes

  1. The Chinese did not explicitly target men. But they ended up getting only men to work with them because in Benin (and most of Africa), men do not often authorize their wives or daughters to work with strangers.

  2. This woman was integrated into the co-operative in 1989 following the death of her husband, a former co-operator. She came and worked with him in the scheme. She is currently the president of the women-only group.

  3. Norman conversion method adapted to the context and to the specificities of Koussin-Lélé scheme was used to estimate the quantity of labor.

  4. Technical efficiency does not imply allocative or economic efficiency, however. Allocative efficiency means that resources are used so that the value of an additional unit of output (the value of the marginal product) is equal to the cost of an additional unit of input. Thus, technically inefficient farmers may be allocatively efficient, vice versa (Green 1993). But, technical and allocative efficiencies are necessary for a farmer to be economically efficient. In this paper we focus only on technical efficiency.

  5. For more details about this method and the relatives basic equations, please see Green 1997; Battese et al. 1996; Battese and Coelli 1995.

  6. One rice farmer was eliminated because he had problems during the season and the data collected from him was not complete.

  7. In the study area, children start working in the rice farms when they are above 10 years old. The conversion of rice farm household members into equivalent-adult (Eq.adt) was made using the FAO/OMS scale. According to this scale, a man whose age is between 15 and 65 years is equal to 1 Eq.adt; a woman at the same scale of age is equal to 0.8 Eq.adt; a child of less than 15 years or a person older than 65 years is equivalent to 0.5 Eq.adt.

  8. The estimated average dependency ratio is similar to the 1.5 estimated ratio for part of the Republic of Benin by Floquet and Mongbo (1998).

  9. One dollar US ($US) equal 550 CFA (15 March 2006).

  10. Mongbo and Agbazahou, as in this study, used the “gross margins” or “marges brutes” method whereas Kinkingninhoun-Medagbé (2003) who used the “net agricultural income net” (NAR) method or “revenu agricole net” (RAN) method obtained 294,491. The method used in this paper tends to account for fewer cost items.

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Acknowledgments

We extend our sincere gratitude to two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the earlier version of the paper. We also sincerely thank the two chief editors (the current and the previous one) for their constructive comments, which greatly improved the quality of the paper. The financial Support of European Union (EU) and the Government of Japan is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Africa Rice Center (WARDA), 01 B.P. 2031, Cotonou, Benin

    Florent M. Kinkingninhoun-Mêdagbé, Aliou Diagne, Franklin Simtowe & Afiavi R. Agboh-Noameshie

  2. Programme Analyse de la Politique Agricole (PAPA) de l’Institut National des Recherches Agricoles du Bénin (INRAB), BP 128, Porto-Novo, Benin

    Patrice Y. Adégbola

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  1. Florent M. Kinkingninhoun-Mêdagbé
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Correspondence to Franklin Simtowe.

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Kinkingninhoun-Mêdagbé, F.M., Diagne, A., Simtowe, F. et al. Gender discrimination and its impact on income, productivity, and technical efficiency: evidence from Benin. Agric Hum Values 27, 57–69 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-008-9170-9

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