Gendered determinants of adaptation in growing maize in smallholder agriculture in East Africa

Though gender dimensions are widely thought to influence adaptive activities of households (such as responses to climate change), there is little quantitative research, covering large scales, indicating the presence or magnitude of such impacts. We investigate adaptation in terms of changes in household farming practices of maize in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. While controlling for a number of household, site- and activity-specific characteristics, we investigate impacts of three types of gender variables on adaptation: roles, household headship and forecast information. Our measures of adaptation include counts of changed farming activities and probabilities of undertaking a given activity, with activity-specific controls for categories of types of adaptations. Results suggest that drivers of adaptation frequently depend on the specific category of activity being undertaken. Nonetheless, within this heterogeneous context, we find the following general results. For roles, relative to situations where both men and women are involved, some activities dominated by women and men alone are not prone to adaptation. For household headship, male-headed households are more prone to adaptation for some categories of activities, but specific roles of the non-head spouse may be an important consideration. For forecast information, providing information to only women does not affect adaptation, with more promising results if information is provided to both men and women. Overall, our results suggest the importance of understanding gendered relations within households and highlight potential problems with development programmes that just focus on women for promoting change.