International Center for Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe), Nairobi, Kenya.
CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets - International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2018 May 31;13(5):e0197995. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0197995. eCollection 2018.
This paper documents a positive relationship between maize productivity in western Kenya and women's empowerment in agriculture, measured using indicators derived from the abbreviated version of the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index. Applying a cross-sectional instrumental-variable regression method to a data set of 707 maize farm households from western Kenya, we find that women's empowerment in agriculture significantly increases maize productivity. Although all indicators of women's empowerment significantly increase productivity, there is no significant association between the women's workload (amount of time spent working) and maize productivity. Furthermore, the results show heterogenous effects with respect to women's empowerment on maize productivity for farm plots managed jointly by a male and female and plots managed individually by only a male or female. More specifically, the results suggest that female- and male-managed plots experience significant improvements in productivity when the women who tend them are empowered. These findings provide evidence that women's empowerment contributes not only to reducing the gender gap in agricultural productivity, but also to improving, specifically, productivity from farms managed by women. Thus, rural development interventions in Kenya that aim to increase agricultural productivity-and, by extension, improve food security and reduce poverty-could achieve greater impact by integrating women's empowerment into existing and future projects.
本文记录了肯尼亚西部玉米生产力与农业赋权之间的积极关系，农业赋权通过简化版妇女赋权在农业指数中的指标来衡量。本文应用横截面工具变量回归方法，对来自肯尼亚西部的 707 个玉米农户数据集进行分析，发现农业赋权显著提高了玉米生产力。尽管所有妇女赋权指标都显著提高了生产力，但妇女工作量（工作时间）与玉米生产力之间没有显著关联。此外，结果显示，在男女共同管理的农地和仅由男性或女性管理的农地中，妇女赋权对玉米生产力的影响存在异质性。具体而言，结果表明，当照顾这些农地的妇女赋权时，女性和男性管理的农地的生产力会显著提高。这些发现提供了证据，表明妇女赋权不仅有助于缩小农业生产力方面的性别差距，而且还有助于提高女性管理的农场的生产力。因此，肯尼亚旨在提高农业生产力的农村发展干预措施——并由此延伸，旨在改善粮食安全和减少贫困——可以通过将妇女赋权纳入现有和未来的项目中，取得更大的影响。
