Women in Agriculture

Abstract

Migration is transforming rural economies, landscapes, and potentially, gender relations. Migration is one of the drivers of the so-called feminization of agriculture in Latin America. This feminization has relevance for everyone given agriculture’s role in regional food security, national shared prosperity, and household resilience to shocks. The objective of this study is to investigate the feminization of agriculture as well as its implications for women’s agency, household welfare, and agricultural productivity. This report provides some introduction to women in agriculture, lays out the study methodology, and provides background information on migration, women, and agriculture in Guatemala. Women’s role in agriculture is even more crucial in Guatemala, which suffers from the double burden of chronic malnutrition and obesity. This analysis seeks to investigate the impact of male migration on agriculture, but also its implications for women’s agency and agricultural productivity, as mediated by factors such as land tenure and access to agricultural extension services. This analysis seeks to better understand how male out-migration is influencing women’s agency in agriculture; to understand if, when women are in control of their farms, it changes the types of decisions they make and thus the results that they obtain; and finally, to get a better sense of how these differences in agency (if any) lead to better or worse livelihood outcomes for the farm household. This study is based on a quantitative field survey conducted in August 2014, as well as qualitative focus groups and interviews conducted in May 2014 to test the questionnaire.