Women make significant contribution to rice farming, processing, and marketing, but only have limited access to technical knowledge and technologies that can reduce their drudgery and labor bottlenecks, and provide them with additional income. Women also oversee the reproductive responsibilities. This paper comparatively investigates the role of women in rice farming across four countries (Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Madagascar, Sierra Leone) by examining the labor time distribution and its resulting income for men and women. It also assessed the determinants of their labor inputs in different rice farming environments. Results show that women and men spend on average 1-3 h per day in rice production, making 45-135 working days of involvement in annual rice cultivation. Looking into the distribution of labor input provision in productive activities, it is found that apart from the specific activity of rice parboiling, which is practiced in certain countries mostly by women, men are the ones more engaged in rice farming. The specific labor input depends on several factors including the farm size, time spent on non-agricultural activities, and access to production equipment. These results provide the first evidence to that women farmers do not necessarily spend more time than men in rice cultivation in Africa, as it is often assumed. Certainly, across countries and systems, and also within male and female farmers categories, there are heterogeneous labor inputs and associated determining factors and incomes. Male farmers earn higher income than female farmers in the different productive activities, except only for rice parboiling. This finding indicates that increasing labor input for rice would not result in higher income for female farmers. Female farmers might find better options in other agricultural activities such as food processing.

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This paper identifies some ways to effectively transfer complex and gender-biased technology information and knowledge (TIK) to both men and women by analyzing the diffusion of Smart-valleys technology in West-Africa. ANOVA and Fisher's exact tests were applied to data collected from 1120 lowland rice farmers in West Africa. Results confirm the general gender inequality in TIK communication with male farmers having more access to Smart-valleys TIK than female lowland farmers. Only few female communicators were used in Smart-valleys TIK transfer even if they were found to be as efficient as men at communicating and teaching. However, opposite results obtained in Togo in particular reveal that it is possible to ensure gender equality in agricultural TIK communication, even in case of complex and gender-bias technologies, if specific gender mainstreaming and gender equity actions are undertaken during technology diffusion. Women-to-women communication improved female farmers access to Smart-valleys TIK confirming that involving female communicators will reduce gender inequality in TIK diffusion. On-farm demonstration was identified as the most effective approach, not only in Smart-valleys TIK communication, but also in ensuring gender equity in access of both male and female farmers to the TIK. Therefore, on-farm demonstration combined with oral explanations should be adopted as the main approach in complex and gender-biased technologies diffusion in general, and in Smart-valleys diffusion in particular.

Over the last three decades, many research works have been conducted to define and measure the complex and composite concept of empowerment. However, an individual empowerment tool is still needed, to be applied for any disadvantaged group, women, youths (male or female), poor, etc., or any economic sector, and which can be more suitable for rigorous impact assessment studies. This paper contributes to the growing empowerment literature by providing a new multi-domain, survey-based empowerment measurement tool, the individual empowerment index (IEI). The IEI is unique in its characterization and construction. It combines individual empowerment scores in six empowerment domains: production, household livelihood, resources, income, leadership, and time allocation. It is a flexible and survey-based empowerment parameter that can be generated at individual, household community or country levels, or for any target social category. The IEI is constructed through a specific methodology based on a scale survey with an ordinal variable principle and a general process for construction of domain indicators. A key advantage of the IEI is that different household members (even husband and wife) can have different IEIs and statuses. Findings from applying the IEI approach to data collected from 1120 West-African lowland rice farmers show that lowland rice farmers globally achieved on average 71% of their full empowerment potential with only 40% of them found to be globally empowered. Female farmers were found to have lower control over their lives and were less than male farmers to be empowered. IEI estimates and comparison between WIEI and other women empowerment indexes estimates show reasonable correspondence despite the difference in the methodology and can hold for the validity of the IEI. The new IEI is a suitable tool and is recommended for quantitative and rigorous impact assessment and monitoring of programs and projects empowerment indicators.

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