The Nordic Africa Institute – Publications

The literature suggests marked gender inequality in the use of agricultural technologydespite the availability of evidence that women could be as productive as menwhen given equal access to agricultural resources. This underscores an urgent needto consider improving women’s access to agricultural technology to ensure thesustainable provision of food for all people, and particularly those in developingcountries. This study addresses two specific objectives. It: (a) examines genderdifferences in households’ use of farm-level technology (herbicides, pesticidesand inorganic fertilizer); and (b) assesses the impact of the uptake of agriculturaltechnology on farm production and food consumption, paying particular attentionto the gender of the household head. The results of a three-stage least squares (3SLS)regression reveal that households’ uptake of agricultural technology has a significantpositive effect on their dietary diversity and food consumption expenditure per capitadue to increased farm production. While these results are consistent regardless of thegender of the household head, the extent of effects for female-headed householdsis almost double that for male-headed households. Therefore, an essential policyimplication of our result is that the government could use input subsidies to addresssome of the gender gaps with regard to agricultural technology access and use. Suchefforts should address any entrenched inequalities in women’s access to agriculturalproduction resources and consider other socioeconomic factors such as education andlandholding, which contribute to gender inequality in agricultural technology uptake