Climate, women's resilience and mediating channels in rural Benin

We investigate the gender gap in resilience to climate anomalies and the mediation channels between weather conditions and women's agricultural outcomes in Benin. We find that, compared to a man, agricultural production is lower and more vulnerable to adverse rainfall conditions when the parcel manager is a woman. We also show that the Plans Fonciers Ruraux (PFR), a land titling RCT reform that started in Benin in 2008, does not significantly mitigate the gendered effects of rainfall deviations. Moreover, we provide new suggestive evidence on the role of gender-based intra-household differences when climate variations occur. We find that adverse weather conditions would push female parcel managers to reduce cultivated land, agricultural investment and labour supply more than male managers. We argue that, in rain-fed agriculture, adverse climate events can increase household competition over resources; in such an environment, the differential in intra-household bargaining power may become relevant and result in larger gender gaps.