TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF RESEARCH ON WOMEN FARMERS IN AFRICA: LESSONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS; WITH AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

the gender divisions of labor become less rigid—but
gender remains an important analytic category. No future
changes are likely to make gender less important in our
understanding of technology adoption and agricultural
productivity.

Claiming that gender is an important analytical category,
however, does not tell us what should be done a priori. The
literature documents many examples of projects and
interventions that were designed to benefit women. These
efforts failed many instances, in part, because they did not
recognize the complexity of women’s roles and
responsibilities within households and communities. Even
when projects took into account women’s initial roles and
responsibilities, they failed to anticipate the dynamic
impacts of their interventions. In some cases, better
research could have revealed potential problems before they
arose. In other cases, however, it is unlikely that anyone
could have predicted ex ante the full impact of the projects
in terms of the reallocations of rights and responsibilities
among individuals.

An additional problem with targeting research toward
women is that it is unclear what exactly is meant by the
notion of “technology benefiting women.” Ideally,
improved maize technologies would increase agricultural
productivity, including that of women farmers; increase the
availability and affordability of maize for consumers,
especially poor women; and promote economic growth,
thereby expanding nonagricultural opportunities for
women.

New technologies, however, often have both positive and
negative effects. Increasing the productivity of land may
encourage men to return to agriculture and decrease
women’s access to land. New agricultural technologies that
increase output may also increase women’s labor input.
This, in turn, may add to women’s labor burdens, but
simultaneously increase their control over the output. Ex
ante, we may not be able to determine which effects will be
the strongest, and ex post, it may be difficult to untangle
the net effects.

In spite of the complexity of the issues, the International
Center for the Improvement of Wheat and Maize
(CIMMYT) and others in the agricultural research
community can draw some important lessons from the
literature. First, better baseline surveys of households and
communities are needed before new technology is
introduced. To build our knowledge base of dynamic
effects of technology adoption, it is critical to have studies
that examine patterns of labor allocation, land allocation,
and individual household member welfare—both before
and after the introduction of new technology. Comparing
adopting and nonadopting households does not provide us
with this information. We can only understand the
relationships ex post, given the appropriate data collection
and analysis.

Where baseline surveys have been done, care must be
taken in interpreting the findings. For example, the
discovery that farmers who use improved maize varieties
have larger plots of land than nonadopters does not
necessarily imply that farmers with larger landholdings are
more likely to adopt improved varieties. We cannot
conclude this without information on the size of farmers’
landholdings at the time the adoption decision was made.
Qualitative research, however, may provide insights into
how to interpret the quantitative results. For example, we
should be more comfortable drawing causal relationships
about land size and technology from ex post surveys if we
know that the patterns of landholdings have not changed
over the relevant period.

Second, it seems clear that agricultural researchers need
to continue to listen to both male and female farmers.
These farmers may have insights into how the adoption of
a technology may affect the relationships among household
members. Often, it may be useful to interview nonfarming
members of households too and ask them how they might
expect their activities to change with the introduction of
new technologies.

Third, there are a few specific technological issues that
have relatively direct effects on women’s well-being.
Women in Africa tend to be responsible for processing and
preparing food, including maize. They provide most of the

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