For most women in developing countries labour is their key asset, and agriculture is a particularly important source of self- and wage-employment for those who lack training or resources for employment in other sectors. But women generally face many gender-specific constraints as agricultural labourers and in hiring labour, as a result, they tend to cultivate smaller plots and achieve lower yields.
Women are often time constrained by unpaid household duties such as caregiving and collecting firewood and water,1 and by lower levels of human capital – education, health and nutrition – all of which can affect their labour productivity in agriculture and other sectors.2 In addition, female-headed households have less labour available for farm work than male-headed households because they typically have fewer working-age adult members but more dependants.
Household and community responsibilities and gender-specific labour requirements also mean that women farmers cannot farm as productively as men. Depending on cultural norms, some farming activities, such as ploughing and spraying, rely on access to male labour without which women farmers face delays that may lead to losses in output.