Gender Productivity Gap in Farmer-led Irrigation in the Upper East Region of Ghana

In this paper, we explore whether and to what extent there are disparities in vegetable productivity among female and male farmers practicing small-scale irrigation systems in the Upper East Region of Ghana, and what factors seem to drive the disparities. To do so, we use a cross-sectional data set that comprises 58 women and 192 men from 24 communities, gathered between September 2022 and February 2023 and employ Ordinary Least Square regression with community fixed effects, Oaxaca-Blinder and Recentered Influence Function decomposition analyses. Results show a statistically significant gender gap across the entire productivity distribution, except for the 80th and 90th productivity percentile, whereby the gender difference ranges between 56.9% to even 103.3% to the detriment of women producers. On average, this disadvantage amounts to approximately $987.42 per ha. The decomposition analyses further suggest that the gender gap is rather due to differences in the level than in the returns to resources. The gender gap could, hence, be significantly reduced if women would be able to operate the same size of cultivated land as men. Furthermore, overcoming structural disadvantages in terms of labor, knowledge, and liquidity may help women generate the same returns from the factors as men.