Cooperatives are another source of information, but
women are frequently excluded from them (Baser 1988).
The extent to which these and other farmer organizations
focus on male or female farmers will influence gender bias
in access to information.
Finally, utilization of information may depend on
education and literacy levels. Lack of education and higher
levels of illiteracy among women farmers may be an
additional constraint to women receiving adequate
information (Fortmann 1976; Baser 1988).
Access to Mechanization
Although there are studies on mechanization in Africa
(Pingali et al. 1987; Grenoble 1990; Seifert 1993), little
emphasis in the literature has been placed on the
differential access of women and men to mechanization. In
many areas, smallholder farmers still rely on hand-held
hoes and cutlasses for most farm work, hence
mechanization is not an important issue. In other areas,
animal traction is used for plowing. In these areas, access
to draft animals affects a farmer’s output. Women tend to
own fewer oxen because they are a relatively large capital
investment. Given the labor constraints of many female-
headed households, Fortmann (1980) suggests that it may
be preferable to hire oxen for plowing than to purchase
them and then hire labor year-round to maintain them.
Plowing with animals is still usually considered men’s
work, and although women do use plows, most often
women farmers hire men to plow their fields. Hiring
animals or workers to plow results in less control over
scheduling the plowing activities.
Gender Issues in Access to Inputs:
Summary
There are several sets of gender issues that bear on access to
inputs. The first issue is whether there are constraints
based solely on gender that limit access, e.g., formal laws
and regulations that prohibit a married woman’s access to
credit without her husband’s signature. Even if formal rules
do not prohibit women from obtaining credit, often
informal norms of organizations that provide credit may
prevent women from independently obtaining it.
Membership in cooperatives and farmer organizations that
control access to inputs may be based on gender, either
officially or in practice. Continuing perceptions that
women are not “real” farmers, but only helpers on family
farms, may also limit their access to resources (Safilios-
Rothschild 1985).
In addition, many of the factors affecting access to
inputs are strongly correlated with gender. Access to inputs
may depend on the size of landholdings, level of income,
or potential level of agricultural production; women may
be disadvantaged in all of these, thus it becomes difficult
to disentangle the cause and effect relationships. Finally,
household survey data usually investigates the use of
inputs, rather than the farmer’s access to them.
Consequently, they do not always tell us whether the lack
of access to these inputs is a binding constraint for
farmers. There are also questions as to whether women
and men, given the same levels of access to resources,
would choose to use the same inputs; however, there is
strong evidence that both men and women make rational
decisions. It may be particularly important to compare the
access to inputs of women farmers in male-headed
households and female-headed households. Programs or
groups that restrict membership to household heads, such
as credit associations and export crop marketing
cooperatives in Malawi, may disadvantage married women
more than female household heads (Koopman Henn
1983). Similarly, the Lima bank in Zambia reportedly
required a husband’s permission before a married woman
could apply for a loan; single women, meanwhile, had to
prove that they were unmarried (Keller et al. 1990). It is
not clear how such policies affect the access to credit of
female household heads.
Simply comparing male- and female-headed households
may not provide adequate information on access to inputs.
We need a broader framework that considers more types
of households to understand fully which farmers have
access to resources and which do not. This type of analysis
may also provide information as to whether the
constraints are based on gender, household structure, or
on the size and scale of the farm.
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