Constraints to and Opportunities for Women’s Participation in High Value Agricultural Commodity Value Chains in Kenya

Well-functioning factor and product markets can provide the poor, particularly smallholder farmers, with avenues for wealth creation. Yet in sub-Saharan Africa, markets for agricultural inputs and outputs are often thin or disorganized. Challenges to smallholder women farmers are particularly high, because they potentially face higher entry barriers than men in modern market chains. This study aims to examine bottlenecks to and opportunities for different categories of women to participate in the stages of the value chains for high value agricultural commodities, with a view to identifying interventions that can promote women’s participation in markets for high value agricultural commodities. The study focuses on two categories of women namely those in male and female -headed households. The findings are based on a case study of avocado value chain in Kenya, which depicts export and domestic market orientation. The data were collected through focus group discussions, key informant interviews and household surveys. The results show that where the chain is well developed and the returns are high as in the export avocado chain, women dominate the production stage while men tend to own the fields, make decisions on sales of fruits of premium quality and control revenues. Nevertheless, women in female headed households appear to be fully integrated in most of the stages of the export value chain, although they face greater challenges than men in performing tasks that are physically demanding like harvesting and those that require specialised skills such as grading and spraying. Consequently, integrating such women into the export market will require alleviating constraints that limit their participation in such markets like provision of interlinked services for spraying, harvesting, and grading coupled with prompt payment of the proceeds. Nevertheless, integrating women in male headed households in the export market will require involving them in the trainings on certification standards.