Vegetable Growers and Women Empowerment: Their Effect in Poverty Reduction in Region Korhogo (Côte d’Ivoire)

Abstract

In Côte d’Ivoire, women occupy an important place in the agricultural sector, which is the basis of the country’s economy. There is unanimous agreement on the essential role that these women must play through their empowerment for the country’s development. Therefore, we must find appropriate solutions to the problem of women’s empowerment in order to enable them to participate vigorously in the country’s development. This study aims to address the problems of women’s empowerment in agriculture by highlighting the potential opportunity that the practice of market gardening represents for women’s empowerment. Based on a qualitative approach using ENV (2019) data, the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) shows that women producer of market garden produce are as self-reliant as their counterparts in other agricultural sub-sectors. In the same logic, the WEAI shows us that the practice of this crop has a positive effect on women’s empowerment. By using these four (4) methods of effect determination, namely the Nearest Neighbour Method, Radius Method, Stratification Method and Kernel Method, the following values were obtained: 0.007; 0.039; 0.017; 0.027, which are all positive. The objective of the study is to determine the impact of market gardening on the empowerment of the women who practice it.