Women's Empowerment in Agriculture and Household‐Level Health in Northern Ghana: A Capability Approach

Zereyesus, Yacob

doi:10.1002/jid.3307

Cited by 21 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…There are some fine contributions in the literature examining the effect of women empowerment on development outcomes in northern Ghana. Malapit and Quisumbing (2015) and Tsiboe et al (2018b) assessed the effect of women empowerment on nutritional outcomes, while Tsiboe et al (2018a), Zereyesus et al (2017), Zereyesus (2017) and Ross et al (2015) examined the effect of women empowerment on health status. As observed, these studies focused on nutrition and health outcomes, but not on food security.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women empowerment in agriculture and food security in Savannah Accelerated Development Authority zone of Ghana

Asitik

Abu

2020

AJEMS

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PurposeThis paper assessed the causal effect of women empowerment in agriculture (WEA) on household food security in the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) zone of Ghana.Design/methodology/approachThe study used the extended probit regression with endogenous treatment to account for potential endogeneity of empowerment and food security using data from the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) Feed the Future baseline survey.FindingsAll three indicators of women empowerment positively impact food security. In specific terms, when women participate in crop and livestock decision-making in the household, and when they have access to cultivable lands, their households have lower probabilities of being severely or moderately hungry. Also, crop decision-making exhibits the highest impact on food security.Practical implicationsWhile there may be several policy options to eradicate food insecurity challenges in Ghana, the policy measure of empowering women in agriculture needs attention. Priority should be given to empowering them in production decision-making.Social implicationsThere is the need to sensitise households on the importance of women decision-making within the household and their access to land.Originality/valueIn the context of the empowerment literature, from our search, this study is the first in applying the hunger scale as a measure of food security and represents the first attempt at examining the effect of women empowerment on food security in Ghana.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women empowerment in agriculture and food security in Savannah Accelerated Development Authority zone of Ghana

Asitik

Abu

2020

AJEMS

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“…In Kenya, for example, women make up between 42% and 65% of the agricultural labour force [ 4 , 5 ], in addition to their traditional domestic responsibilities. Despite women’s important role in the agricultural sector, however, empirical evidence shows that they lag behind men with regard to agricultural productivity in SSA due to the gender inequalities that persist in respect of access to, control over and utilisation of productive resources such as land, livestock, labour, education, extension and financial services, and technology [ 4 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ]. Inequality in landholding is especially severe in SSA.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More specifically, many international development programmes, such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Feed the Future initiative, which also operates in Kenya, perceive women’s empowerment as a key factor in closing gender gaps in agricultural productivity [ 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 24 , 6 ]. Research has also shown that empowering women can lead to improvements in their status both inside and outside the household—including greater control over household resources; better mental health; reduced time constraints; and increased access to financial services, health care, skills development, income-earning opportunities, information about markets and legal rights—all of which may, in turn, positively impact agricultural productivity, nutrition and food security [ 6 , 32 , 33 , 34 ]. Hence, promoting gender equality is a major focus of rural development policy that aims to achieve sustained food security and poverty alleviation in agrarian economies, including those in SSA [ 35 , 36 , 37 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although some empirical studies have used the WEAI to investigate the impact of women’s empowerment on food security and nutrition-related outcomes [e.g. 6 , 33 , 34 , 38 , 39 , 40 , and 41 ], and have generally found that women’s empowerment has the potential to improve both such outcomes, thus far only a single study [ 42 ] has used the WEAI to explore what effects women’s empowerment may have on agricultural productivity. Other related studies have mainly focused on whether and how farm productivity is affected when inputs are redistributed between women and men instead of only among men in households (e.g., [ 12 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 ]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Women’s empowerment in agriculture and agricultural productivity: Evidence from rural maize farmer households in western Kenya

et al. 2018

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This paper documents a positive relationship between maize productivity in western Kenya and women’s empowerment in agriculture, measured using indicators derived from the abbreviated version of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index. Applying a cross-sectional instrumental-variable regression method to a data set of 707 maize farm households from western Kenya, we find that women’s empowerment in agriculture significantly increases maize productivity. Although all indicators of women’s empowerment significantly increase productivity, there is no significant association between the women’s workload (amount of time spent working) and maize productivity. Furthermore, the results show heterogenous effects with respect to women’s empowerment on maize productivity for farm plots managed jointly by a male and female and plots managed individually by only a male or female. More specifically, the results suggest that female- and male-managed plots experience significant improvements in productivity when the women who tend them are empowered. These findings provide evidence that women’s empowerment contributes not only to reducing the gender gap in agricultural productivity, but also to improving, specifically, productivity from farms managed by women. Thus, rural development interventions in Kenya that aim to increase agricultural productivity—and, by extension, improve food security and reduce poverty—could achieve greater impact by integrating women’s empowerment into existing and future projects.

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“…Empirical research has shown that empowering women can lead to improvements in their status both inside and outside the household including greater control over household resources; better mental health; reduced time constraints; and increased access to financial services, health care, skills development, income-earning opportunities, information about markets and legal rights all of which may, in turn, positively impact agricultural productivity, nutrition and food security (Zereyesus, 2017;Ross et al, 2015;Smith et al, 2003). The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization viewed that if women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20-30% raising total agricultural output in developing countries by up to 4%, which could in turn reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12-17% (Munshi, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Empirical Assessment of Participation and Decision Making by Rural Women in Agriculture and Livestock Activities

Chaudhary¹,

Forestry²,

Janjhua³

et al. 2020

IJEP

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Women make essential contributions to agriculture and rural economic activities in all developing countries. Even though women contribute 60 to 80% of the labour in agriculture and animal husbandry, their involvement in selection of suitable crops and adoption of innovative and good management practices is very low. The study reported that sampled women respondents have shown participation in all the selected agriculture and livestock activities excluding marketing and financial management. The study put forth that very less households witness female participation in agriculture and livestock activities related decision making. Some of the important reasons for their subdued role in decision making in agricultural production could be lack of awareness about new opportunities and modern technologies, inadequate facilities for training and capacity building and poor access to extension workers for consultation whenever needed.

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Women's Empowerment in Agriculture and Household‐Level Health in Northern Ghana: A Capability Approach

Cited by 21 publications

References 31 publications

Women empowerment in agriculture and food security in Savannah Accelerated Development Authority zone of Ghana

Women empowerment in agriculture and food security in Savannah Accelerated Development Authority zone of Ghana

Women’s empowerment in agriculture and agricultural productivity: Evidence from rural maize farmer households in western Kenya

An Empirical Assessment of Participation and Decision Making by Rural Women in Agriculture and Livestock Activities

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