The Russia-Ukraine war has continued to cause major disruptions in global supply value chains. This has translated into increased commodity prices and cost of living, with disproportionate adverse impacts on the wellbeing of women and girls worldwide. This rapid assessment provides an analysis of the impacts of the Russia-Ukraine crisis on rural livelihoods in Tanzania with a focus on various vulnerable groups, particularly women and girls.

The policy brief provides an overview of the key trends in the cost of gender gap in agricultural productivity reports and how they compare with patterns documented in other published studies. It also summarizes important lessons on best practices in eradicating inequities in the agricultural sector based on the UN Women and PEI studies.

For Tanzania, the gender gap was substantial: an elimination of the gender gap in agricultural productivity in Tanzania would increase agricultural production by 30 per cent. Closing the gap could raise the country’s gross domestic product by $105 million (T Sh 210 billion) and lift 80,000 people out of poverty each year over a 10-year period. This study differs from its predecessor in that it takes a qualitative rather than quantitative approach to the subject. In its attempt to find underlying causes of the gender gap, the study conducted extensive interviews with 547 women and men in 19 farming villages in rural Tanzania. That is, it moves beyond merely establishing that a gender gap exists in Tanzanian agriculture to explain why it exists and what steps can be taken to reduce and eliminate this gap.

Across sub-Saharan Africa, the agricultural sector remains critical to local and regional economies. It is the basis for food security and an important source of employment, particularly for women. Yet, studies consistently find that female farmers  have lower rates of agricultural productivity than male farmers. Based on original research in five countries (Ethiopia, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and United Republic of Tanzania), this policy brief shows that gender gaps in agricultural...

This report reviews a number of studies to help policymakers diagnose and better understand the nature of these gaps so that agricultural interventions are more effective, scalable and practical. These methods help quantify the structure of constraints which prevent women from having full access to agricultural resources. Dismantling this structure of constraints is crucial for reducing women’s unpaid work burdens and raising the returns to their labour.

The study identifies policy proposals —consistent with Uganda’s Second National Development Plan, Public Finance Management Act and Agriculture Sector Strategic Plan — to confront gender stereotypes and address women’s time poverty and lack of assets, the lack of attention to gender-responsive climate-smart agricultural extension services, and the need to reform key statistical instruments to better capture gender relations.

The study makes policy recommendations that are designed to confront the gender stereotypes that continue to undermine policy making, address women’s time poverty and lack of incomes, and facilitate the adoption of gender-responsive climate-smart agricultural practices.

The study presents the cost of the gender gap in agricultural productivity in Ethiopia.  The findings of this report are striking, and send a strong signal to policy makers in Ethiopia as well as development partners that closing the gender gap is smart economics. Consider this: That increasing GDP by closing the gender gap in agricultural productivity has the potential to lift as many as 1,050,000 people out of poverty in Ethiopia. This Report helps to lay the ground-work for deeper...

This is the policy brief produced from the study on the cost of the gender gap in agricultural productivity in Ethiopia.  The findings and policy recommendations are striking, and send a strong signal to policy makers in Ethiopia as well as development partners that closing the gender gap is smart economics. This Report helps to lay the ground-work for deeper investigation as to where to invest for the most cost-effective policies. The analysis finds that women’s lesser capacity to...

Assessing the Gender Gap in Agricultural Productivity in Rwanda

A documentation of good practices on gender and the extractive industries will therefore help guide governments, the private sector, civil society organizations and other stakeholders in developing policy, programmes and legislation that will do a better job of addressing challenges facing women affected by—and hoping to benefit from—the extractive industries sector. This publication on emerging good practices is a valuable contribution to exploring solutions and taking them to scale to engender the extractive industries in Africa.

In sub-Saharan Africa women comprise a large proportion of the agricultural labor force, yet they are consistently found to be less productive than male farmers. The gender gap in agricultural productivity-measured by the value of agricultural produce per unit of cultivated land-ranges from 4-25%, depending on the country and the crop.1 UN Women, the World Bank Africa Gender Innovation Lab, and the UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Initiative jointly produced a report to quantify the cost of the gender gap and the potential gains from closing that gap in Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda.

In this issue : -Introduction: the gender gap in agricultural productivity -Three takeaways on the gender gap in agricultural productivity -Measuring the cost of the gender gap in agricultural productivity -Costing the factors that contribute to the gender gap in agricultural productivity -Finding the biggest bang for the buck: cost-effective policy interventions -Moving from recommendations to implementation -Appendix A: Methodology for quantifying the cost of the gender gap in...