Africa Gender Innovation Lab

87 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

The Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) conducts impact evaluations of development interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa, seeking to generate evidence on how to close the gender gap in earnings, productivity, assets and agency. The GIL team is currently working on over 50 impact evaluations in 21 countries with the aim of building an evidence base with lessons for the region.

Items in this collection

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
  • Publication
    Gender Gaps in Agriculture Productivity and Public Spending in Nigeria
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-09-25) World Bank
    Women farmers produce 30 percent less per hectare than their male counterparts. Among various factors, there are three key drivers of gender gaps in agriculture productivity in Nigeria: women use fewer inputs and have limited participation in extension services, farm less-valuable crops, and hire less productive labor. The four value chains receiving the largest budget allocations are among those with the lowest participation of women farmers. These gaps can be closed via adjustments at fundamental stages of budget allocation and policy formulation. This technical note aims to analyze the gender dimensions of participation, input distribution, and budget allocation across various crop value chains supported by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD). Specifically, the underlying analysis aims to (i) examine women’s participation in the crop value chains for which FMARD provides input support; (ii) quantify the gender gaps in agricultural input use, extension services, and labor productivity; (iii) examine women’s participation and inputs use against budget allocations; and (iv) thereby, formulate recommendations for increasing fiscal space and investments to close the agricultural gender productivity gaps in Nigeria.
  • Publication
    Finding the Time and Labor to Farm: How Social Dynamics Drive Gender Differences in Agricultural Labor in Southern Nigeria
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-03-28) Friedson-Ridenour, Sophia; Gonzalez, Paula; Pierotti, Rachael S.; Olayiwola, Olubukola; Delavallade, Clara
    Across Sub-Saharan Africa smallholder farmers depend heavily on manual labor supplied by their households, families, and communities, but women are particularly labor constrained. This research paired a detailed quantitative examination of patterns of gender difference in the allocation of time and agricultural labor with an in-depth qualitative examination of how people explain those patterns. The descriptive findings and resulting conceptual framework can be used to guide future programming and research. In southwestern Nigeria, married women’s time and agricultural labor constraints are rooted in common social expectations that men’s farm plots take priority and that a woman’s own farming should not interfere with the agricultural production managed by her husband. Women access lower quantity and quality of labor because of off-farm commitments, and time constraints around when in the day and when in the season labor is allocated to their farm plots. Overcoming agricultural labor constraints for women farmers, especially married women, may require reimagining the role of women and men’s farms in the household. Several new Africa gender innovation lab studies suggest avenues for future innovations to support women producers.
  • Publication
    Policy Solutions to Close Gender Gaps in the Agriculture Sector in Nigeria
    (Washington, DC, 2022-07) World Bank
    Substantial gender gaps exist in labor force participation and productivity in the agriculture sector in Nigeria. Closing the gender productivity gap in agriculture could lead to sizable gains in the Nigerian economy, boosting gross domestic product. Key factors driving the gender gaps in agriculture include women farmers’ limited use of farm inputs, choice of lowvalue crops, and lower productivity of hired labor. To successfully close gender gaps, policy makers not only need a detailed account of what drives these gaps, but also a rigorous evidence base on cost-effective policy options. This brief offers guidance on interventions that could be adopted to address the underlying constraints faced by women farmers in Nigeria. These recommendations could also meaningfully inform the framework and implementation of the National Gender Policy on Agriculture.
  • Publication
    Top Policy Lessons in Agriculture
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-03) World Bank
    This policy brief summarizes key policy lessons from the Africa Gender Innovation Lab on ways to empower women farmers.
  • Publication
    GIL Top Policy Lessons on Increasing Women’s Youth Employment
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-01) World Bank
    Young women in Africa are less likely to be employed than young men, as a result of gaps in access to resources such as skills, time, and capital, and due to underlying social norms. Adolescence is a particularly critical time to intervene, as teenage pregnancy or dropping out of school can have severe impacts on future employment and earnings with significant consequences on their lives. At the macroeconomic level, investing in adolescent girls is also crucial for Sub-Saharan Africa`s demographic dividend.
  • Publication
    Can Job Training Decrease Women's Self-Defeating Biases? Experimental Evidence from Nigeria
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-10) Croke, Kevin; Goldstein, Markus; Holla, Alaka
    Gender-based occupational segregation – where women are concentrated in low-paid or low-profit sectors – is a non-trivial source of the gender wage gap worldwide, accounting for as much as 50 percent of the gap in some countries (World Bank 2011). There is evidence that women's biases about their own potential can affect their performance and aspirations. Through an experiment in Nigeria, we found that an information and communications technology (ICT) training resulted in university graduates being 26 percent more likely to work in the ICT sector.
  • Publication
    Are Cash Transfers Better Chunky or Smooth?: Evidence from an Impact Evaluation of a Cash Transfer Program in Northern Nigeria
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017) Bastian, Gautam; Goldstein, Markus; Papineni, Sreelakshmi
    Women receiving unconditional cash transfers in northern Nigeria worked more, particularly, in their own businesses, spent more on consumption, were more food secure, saved more, bought more animals and improved their housing compared to the women in the control group. Quarterly transfers cost half as much as monthly transfers to administer, but there is no difference in outcomes. Women’s ability to control the cash transfers is the same under a quarterly payment scheme and monthly payment scheme. Women use cash transfers to increase investment in their own business activities. Cash transfer recipients were not only more likely to be involved in their own non-farm business but they also spent more on business inputs and increased their business profits. Their husbands remained active farmers and didn’t change their business activities. The lab aims to do this by producing and delivering a new body of evidence and developing a compelling narrative, geared towards policymakers, on what works and what does not work in promoting gender equality.
  • Publication
    Explaining Gender Differentials in Agricultural Production in Nigeria
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-10) Oseni, Gbemisola; Corral, Paul; Goldstein, Markus; Winters, Paul
    Nigeria presents a unique case study on differences in agricultural productivity between men and women. This study, which captures a comprehensive picture of agriculture across the nation, shows that female farmers produce 16 percent less per hectare than their male counterparts, when plot size, farmer characteristics, and inputs are taken into account. This gender gap is driven by the North East and Central zones located in the Northern region of the country, where female farmers are 28 percent less productive than male farmers. In this region, women, particularly those who are older, farm on smaller plots and have lower levels of key inputs, notably fertilizer and labor, which is a well-documented pattern in many African contexts. The Southern region, however, does not fit this established pattern. When controlling for key characteristics and factors of production, in the South no gender gap in productivity is observed, though female farmers will benefit from additional herbicide and female labor. The notably different patterns in these two regions of the same country provide ample space for further study. Thus, in order to decrease the country-wide gender gap in production, the authors recommend extending access to fertilizer, hired labor, and cash crops to women - particularly those in the North.
  • Publication
    Gender Dimensions in Nigerian Agriculture
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-10) Oseni, Gbemisola; Goldstein, Markus; Utah, Amarachi
    With a fast growing population requiring an ever growing supply of food, a national poverty rate of 63 percent, and a labor force that is dominated by agricultural work, Nigeria's efforts to boost agricultural productivity could not be better timed. Though women constitute a large share of the agricultural labor force in Nigeria, little is known about their activities, roles, and constraints in the sector. By thoroughly assessing their agricultural activities, it will help to determine not only what women are doing in the sector, but how best to reduce their constraints and increase productivity. This policy brief, the first in a series of two, investigates the role of women in Nigerian agriculture using the first dataset to capture a comprehensive picture of agriculture across the nation of Nigeria. It finds that women are heavily involved in the production of both, staple (food) crops and cash crops, the agricultural value chain, and livestock production. However, women earn and produce much less than men, and have limited access to land, inputs, labor, and extension services.