April 2024 TOP POLICY LESSONS GENDER IN AGRICULTURE INNOVATION LAB The Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) Across Africa, agriculture serves as a key source of employment and plays a vital conducts impact evaluations of role in ensuring food and nutrition security. African women provide about 40% of development interventions in the agricultural labor across the continent—yet face systemic barriers to success, Sub-Saharan Africa, seeking leading to large gender gaps in agricultural productivity that range from 6% in to generate evidence on Ethiopia to 66% in Niger. These gender gaps represent major untapped economic how to close gender gaps in potential and could yield sizable gains for African economies if they were closed. For earnings, productivity, assets, instance, in Nigeria, closing the gender productivity gap in agriculture could boost and agency. The GIL team is gross domestic product by an estimated US$2.3 billion and potentially as much as currently working on over 80 US$8.1 billion due to spillovers to other economic sectors. impact evaluations in around 30 countries. Various factors contribute to the lower productivity of female farmers, including time and bandwidth constraints resulting from caregiving and household responsibilities, The impact objective of GIL is limited access to and control over labor and other productive inputs, skills and increasing take-up of effective information gaps, low financial liquidity, and restrictive social norms. Impact policies by governments, evaluation evidence from the Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) points toward policy development organizations, and the private sector to address solutions that can address many of these constraints and help female farmers reach the underlying causes of gender their full potential, ultimately contributing to the broader economic development of inequality in Africa, particularly the continent. in terms of women’s economic and social empowerment. The DELIVERING GENDER-SENSITIVE AGRICULTURAL Lab aims to do this by producing EXTENSION SERVICES and delivering a new body of Agricultural extension programs are a critical tool to boost farmer knowledge and evidence and developing a compelling narrative, geared techniques; designing them with the needs of women in mind can help them towards policymakers, on what reach more women effectively and close the gender agricultural productivity gap. works and what does not work Increasing the number of female extension agents, providing gender-mainstreaming in promoting gender equality. for extension agent training curricula, or targeting the training to both spouses can help to improve women farmers’ outcomes. GIL has tested several interventions to make agricultural extension services more effective for women that can be incorporated into large-scale agricultural extension programs. http://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/africa-gender-innovation-lab Policy in Action: Promoting Gender-Inclusive higher levels of investment at lower cost. The couples’ Design in Ethiopia training in this study was highly cost-effective, with a total In Ethiopia, gender-sensitive elements were incorporated cost per household of USD 31, and an estimated return into the agricultural extension service component of the factor of 11x at the household level.2 government’s Rural Capacity Building Project (RCBP). The program increased the number of female extension Policy in Action: Building Social Networks in officers, and trained staff on specific gender issues so Uganda that agents would be able to spot potential differences In rural Uganda, an extension program used the power in how female and male farmers respond to services. A of female social networks to disseminate new agricultural GIL impact evaluation found that the program increased information. In a first networking session for the program, the overall area of cultivated land and the adoption of each woman was paired with another female cotton marketable crops, suggesting that access to extension farmer that she did not previously know. After the initial helped farmers switch to more commercial, market- session, the women were encouraged to stay in touch and oriented agriculture. In areas covered by the RCBP, share new agricultural information about recently adopted more people contributed to income-generating activities, cash crops. When compared to standard agricultural which bolstered economic activity. More work was also extension programs, the intervention significantly undertaken off-the-farm. The impacts of the program increased productivity for all women farmers except for benefited men and women equally; while women saw those in the highest income quintile. In addition, there were benefits from the program, it did not close the overall significant spillover effects in productivity for male farmers. gender gap.1 While further research is needed to determine what drove the increased productivity, the researchers found that Policy in Action: Engaging Couples in Côte women who were paired with another woman farmer had d’Ivoire increased levels of agricultural knowledge, measured via In Côte d’Ivoire, the Gender Innovation Lab tested several tests. These gains in knowledge accounted for roughly interventions to address critical issues: women farmers 20% of the increase in yields.3 are concentrated in low-value crops, lack access to critical productive inputs, and adopt agricultural technologies at Policy in Action: Fostering an Entrepreneurial lower rates. In the context of the World Bank PSAC project Mindset for Farmers in Mozambique and working together with the Ivorian rubber professional Recent GIL research has demonstrated that an association APROMAC, farmers were offered subsidized innovative psychology-based training that encourages rubber seedlings along with a couples’ training: the male entrepreneurs and farmers to develop a more growth- rubber producer and their spouse simultaneously received and future-oriented mindset, as well as increase risk- trainings on agricultural practices, and together created taking and persistence, can lead to large improvements a joint action plan to manage farm tasks—addressing in firm and farm outcomes. Building on positive impacts possible behavioral barriers to cooperation. Recipients of personal initiative training for entrepreneurs4, of the couples’ agricultural extension training had the World Bank Integrated Growth Poles Project in higher-quality agricultural planning, increased women’s Mozambique combined agricultural extension targeted management of cash-crop tasks, and saw substantial to women farmers with a personal initiative (PI) training. increases in the value of household agricultural production. The agricultural extension intervention focused on Farmers in the couples’ training group planted 20% promoting experimentation and adoption of best farming more trees compared to those receiving an individual practices and locally relevant cash crops, as well as training without their spouses. The wives’ presence equipping women farmers with basic agribusiness skills and participation in the creation of an action plan for to run a farm as a business. The PI training focused rubber cultivation increased their visibility and planned on fostering an entrepreneurial proactive mindset (being responsibility in rubber production, which in turn improved self-starting, future-thinking, and overcoming internal the efficiency of household farm production and promoted barriers that keep individuals from achieving their goals) 1 Buehren, N.; Goldstein, M.; Molina, E.; and Vaillant, J. 2019. The Impact of Strengthening Agricultural Extension Services on Women Farmers: Evidence from Ethiopia. Agricultural Economics 50(4): 407–19. 2 Donald, Aletheia; Goldstein, Markus; Rouanet, Léa. 2022. Two Heads Are Better Than One: Agricultural Production and Investment in Côte d’Ivoire. Policy Research Working Papers;10047. World Bank, Washington, DC. 3 Vasilaky, Kathryn and Leonard, Kenneth. 2016. As Good as the Networks They Keep?: Improving Outcomes through Weak Ties in Rural Uganda. Economic Development and Cultural Change. 10.1086/697430. 4 Campos, Francisco; Frese, Michael; Goldstein, Markus; Iacovone, Leonardo; Johnson, Hillary; McKenzie, David, and Mensmann, Mona. 2018. Personal Initiative Training Leads to Remarkable Growth of Women-Owned Small Businesses in Togo. Gender Innovation Lab Policy Brief No. 22. World Bank, Washington, DC. in both on- and off-farm activities. Results show that Engaging men and women together, through either the program fostered entrepreneurship outside the intervention, not only empowered women themselves, farm: doubling the share of women running profitable but also boosted their life satisfaction and that of their off-farm businesses and generating important additional husbands. The behavior change intervention increased sources of income for the households. The training also women’s empowerment through increases in self- enhanced the effectiveness of agricultural extension, confidence, self-esteem, life satisfaction, and freedom leading to large increases in area cultivated and adoption from intimate partner violence (IPV), with no impact on of fertilizers, pesticides, good farming practices (e.g., women’s access to resources. Meanwhile, the economic crop rotation and mulching) and cash crops, generating intervention induced large increases in women’s access greater overall value of harvest and value of harvest to resources (through cane ownership and management) sold. Household expenditures increased, and results and agency (via increases in decision-making power, persisted after the interventions left the field. for financial, agricultural, and household management decisions). Combining the interventions offered no additional benefit beyond the more effective intervention INTEGRATING WOMEN INTO on its own, suggesting the different interventions act CASH CROP VALUE CHAINS AND more as substitutes than complements. Importantly, ENTERPRISES neither of the interventions led to an increase in IPV or Across Africa, women are often concentrated in low- created adverse effects on the rest of the household.6 value crops, which limits the potential economic returns on their farms. Evidence has indicated that when women Policy in Action: Delivering Cash Grants and a do manage cash crop plots—and have access to the Community Livelihoods Program in Nigeria same inputs and resources as men—they are able to be as productive as their male counterparts. GIL has A program in northwest Nigeria—a region of the country found evidence for two promising programs and policies with deeply entrenched norms that restrict women that can help women shift into higher-value activities: from working—led to strong impacts on the likelihood behavioral nudges for male spouses, and cash grants to that women shifted their time to non-farm enterprise couples through community livelihoods programs. activities. Participants received a large cash transfer and a community livelihoods program (the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Feed the Future Nigeria Policy in Action: Targeting Couples and Livelihoods project). After receiving the services, women Leveraging Incentives in Uganda became more engaged in home-based activities, like petty Many women’s empowerment interventions target women trading or rice crop processing. In addition, the community directly, with mixed results. Evidence from Uganda emphasis of the program helped reduce potential backlash indicates that engaging men and women together can from giving cash grants directly to women.7 help foster women’s participation in cash crop production. Couples participated in a workshop with topics centered on communication and cooperation between spouses, EMPOWERING FEMALE FARMERS gender-sensitivity training, and women’s participation THROUGH FINANCIAL INNOVATION in cash cropping. A second intervention used a small Female farmers have less access to cash and have more incentive—project staff visited the households in-person, limited access to credit than their male counterparts, and then gave households a small thank-you gift—to which prevents them from making investments that encourage men to transfer sugarcane contracts into their would boost their agricultural productivity. Across Sub- wife’s name. With the encouragement, about 70% of Saharan Africa, there is a 12-percentage point gender households agreed to transfer a block to their wife—and gap in the ownership of formal financial institution the couples’ training further nudged some households to accounts.8 Moreover, women, particularly in rural areas, transfer their contracts. Overall, registering the blocks in are less likely to own mobile phones, limiting their access the wife’s name led to more women interacting with the to financial services and technology. Even when they do purchasing company, and increases in the number of have cash on hand, women often have less control over blocks held by women.5 their own money compared to men due to social norms. 5 Kate, Ambler; Kelly, Jones; Michael, O’Sullivan. Facilitating women’s access to an economic empowerment initiative: Evidence from Uganda. World Development, Volume 138, 2021. 6 Ambler, Kate, Kelly M. Jones, and O’Sullivan, Michael. 2021. “Increasing Women’s Empowerment: Implications for Family Welfare.” IZA Discussion Paper 14861. 7 Bastian, Gautam; Goldstein, Markus; Papineni, Sreelakshmi. 2017. Are Cash Transfers Better Chunky or Smooth?: Evidence from an Impact Evaluation of a Cash Transfer Pro- gram in Northern Nigeria. Gender Innovation Lab Policy Brief; No. 21. World Bank, Washington, DC. 8 The Global Findex Database 2021 This hinders women’s ability to engage with markets Policy In Action: Introducing Private Savings throughout the agricultural cycle. GIL evidence shows For Women In Food Systems the benefits of investing in innovative financial solutions Pressure to redistribute one’s income with others could to address these constraints. disincentivize the adoption of new technologies as well as workers’ engagement in the labor market. To address this challenge, GIL designed and implemented a financial innovation to lower redistributive pressure among female cashew-processing workers: a blocked savings account into which gains in workers’ earnings get transferred. To pinpoint the role of redistributive pressure, the researchers offered workers either a private savings account or one visible to their social network. Take-up of the private account was substantially higher at 60%, compared to 14% for the non-private account. Being offered a private account increased workers’ attendance by 9.7% and earnings by 11.4%. Importantly, these positive effects were achieved without reducing income redistribution to others. These results underscore that strengthening women’s control over their income—in particular by increasing the privacy of women’s earnings and savings—may boost overall welfare.10 ADDRESING TIME CONSTRAINTS WITHIN THE HOUSEHOLD Most rural households in lower-income countries rely on farming as their primary source of income, and on labor as the primary input to agricultural production.11 Policy in Action: Unlocking Innovative Harvest However, time is a scarce resource for women farmers, Finance in Burkina Faso who are more likely than men to care for children In Burkina Faso, lack of adequate storage facilities and while working in the fields. Childcare programs can credit market imperfections constitute a challenge for improve women farmers’ economic status—and that many female farmers. To mitigate these challenges, GIL of their households and communities—by increasing tested an innovative inventory credit system, warrantage. the amount of time that women spend in the field and This system allowed farmers to simultaneously store their improving their agricultural productivity. In addition, crop production and access credit by depositing grains mechanization, including in the form of animal traction, has the potential to raise agricultural incomes and as collateral for a loan, typically up to 80% of the grain facilitate the structural transformation of developing value, at harvest time. The average loan size was $40, country economies. Beyond economic benefits, labor- with an annual interest rate of 9.75%. Results indicate a saving technology has differential impacts within the high uptake of 92%—similar across female- and male- household that are crucial to understand. headed households—with households with access to the warrantage scheme experiencing a significant 15% Policy In Action: Implementing Childcare increase in harvest value. Moreover, the additional cash on Centers In The Democratic Republic Of The hand led to increased investments in education, livestock holdings, and agricultural inputs for the following year.9 Congo In partnership with the DRC Ministry of Education, the Congolese NGO REPAFE and Save the Children, GIL 9 Delavallade, Clara and Godlonton, Susan. 2023. Locking Crops to Unlock Investment: Experimental Evidence on Warrantage in Burkina Faso. Journal of Development Econom- ics. 102959. 10 Carranza, Eliana; Donald, Aletheia; Grosset, Florian; Kaur, Supreet. 2022. The Social Tax: Redistributive Pressure and Labor Supply. Policy Research Working Papers;10155. World Bank, Washington, DC. 11 Donald, Aletheia, Campos, Francisco, Vaillant, Julia, and Cucagna, Maria Emilia. 2018. Investing in Childcare for Women’s Economic Empowerment. Gender Innovation Lab Policy Brief, No. 27. World Bank, Washington, DC. piloted rural childcare centers in the Kongo Central province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to alleviate women’s childcare constraints. The centers used existing infrastructure provided by the community, and were open five days per week, 6 hours per day. Centers were open to children aged 2-6 and followed national standards and international best practices in early childhood development. Results show that demand for the centers was high, with over 70% of households provided access to the centers using them. Women decreased their need to multi- task while farming, reporting increases in their concentration, sense of control and overall happiness. Both women and their husbands increased their engagement in commercial activities, leading to large gains in agricultural productivity and broader household income. The program also had positive effects on children’s development.12 Policy In Action: Expanding Use Of Mechanization Among Cotton Producers In Côte D’ivoire Working with the Ministry of Agriculture in Côte d’Ivoire under the Agriculture Support Project (PSAC), GIL examined the impact for cotton producers of receiving subsidized traction kits (composed of two oxen and traction equipment) on agricultural outcomes, labor supply and human development outcomes, paying particular attention to gender differences in intra-household effects. Results show that the delivery of oxen had positive short-term impacts on household cotton harvests and sales, with producers increasing their cotton production and revenues by 7% in the first agricultural season. Longer-run gains in household cotton cultivation include the expansion of cultivated area by 6%, accompanied by an increase in spending on complementary non-labor inputs of approximately 15%. Wives and daughters substantially reduced their work on the farm, with suggestive evidence of improvements in girls’ health. Moreover, in districts with more restrictive gender norms around handling oxen, introducing traction oxen resulted in women shifting to off-farm work. These findings imply that the adoption of labor-saving technology in male-dominant activities can have large intra- household effects and welfare impacts.13 12 Donald, Aletheia; Vaillant, Julia; Campos, Francisco; Cucagna, Maria Emilia. 2018. Caring about Carework: Lifting Constraints to the Productivity of Women Farmers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. World Bank, Washington, DC. 13 Brudevold-Newman, Andrew Peter; Donald, Aletheia Amalia; Rouanet, Lea Marie. Steered Away from the Fields : Short-Term Impacts of Oxen on Agricultural Production and Intra-household Labor Supply (English). Policy Research working paper; no. WPS 10516; Impact Evaluation series. World Bank, Washington, DC. FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT Aletheia Donald adonald@worldbank.org Nelsy Affoum naffoum@worldbank.org Photo credit: Arne Hoel/World Bank, Vincent Tremeau/World Bank, Stephan Gladieu/World Bank 1818 H St NW Washington, DC 20433 USA This work has been funded in part by the Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality (UFGE), which is a multi-donor trust fund administered by the World Bank to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment through experimentation and www.worldbank.org/africa/gil knowledge creation to help governments and the private sector focus policy and programs on scalable solutions with sustainable outcomes. The UFGE is supported with generous contributions from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund.