Abstract
This chapter explores—and explodes—the oft-quoted stylized fact that women produce 60–80 % of food in the developing world. It uses three approaches to shed light on this issue: (1) analyzing labor inputs to agriculture, using both employment data and time-use data; (2) analyzing different ways of assigning agricultural output to men or women, based on four nationally representative household survey datasets; and (3) estimating women’s labor productivity relative to men at the macro level, using national-level agricultural productivity data across time and countries. While it is not possible to substantiate the claim that women produce 60–80 % of the food in developing countries—or even that they provide 60–80 % of the labor in agriculture, women contribute a large portion of the measured contributions to agricultural labor and women’s share of the measured agricultural labor force has a positive impact on national-level agricultural productivity. While women are not the majority of agricultural workers, the agricultural sector is important for women: 48 % of the economically active women in the world—and 79 % in developing countries—report that their primary activity is agriculture. The “60–80 %” statistical claim obscures the complex underlying reality, that it is difficult to separate women’s labor from other uses and from men’s labor, and that it cannot be understood properly without considering the gender gap in access to land, capital, assets, human capital, and other productive resources.
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Notes
- 1.
The one reference that indicates that these numbers are not accurate is Jackson (2005), who says, “It is interesting that this statement is so enduring, so effective—and so wrong…”.
- 2.
It is not clear what it would mean for food not to be locally grown. Usually the context implies that it is consumed near where it is produced.
- 3.
Katz (2003) has similar estimates.
- 4.
These include Congo, Jordan, Libya, Palestinian Territory, Portugal, and Turkey.
- 5.
For example, a discussion of these studies in Africa by Charmes (2006) provides an analysis of the nonmarket time spent in agricultural activities, but does not include the measure of agricultural activities in the market sector.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
Livestock products are also not included in this section of the analysis.
- 9.
While the data are also available on land owned by men and women, it isn’t possible to sort out which outputs are produced on land that is owned by an individual, separate from that simply held by them.
- 10.
- 11.
The econometric estimations all were done both with and without a measure of gross national product (GNP) per/capita. This is occasionally used as a measure of labor quality, but is certainly simultaneously determined with agricultural output per worker in the agricultural labor force. While lagged GNP could be included, the levels are still highly correlated with agricultural output per worker. The coefficients on women’s share of labor were robust to the inclusion or exclusion of this variable.
- 12.
- 13.
This specification assumes constant returns to scale in the production technology.
- 14.
Using the indicator variables for the year does not impose the structure of a smooth growth rate that would be implied by including a time trend; this is a more general specification.
- 15.
See Doss (2001) for a review of this literature on Africa.
- 16.
- 17.
FAOSTAT.
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Doss, C. (2014). If Women Hold Up Half the Sky, How Much of the World’s Food Do They Produce?. In: Quisumbing, A., Meinzen-Dick, R., Raney, T., Croppenstedt, A., Behrman, J., Peterman, A. (eds) Gender in Agriculture. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8616-4_4
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