Empowerment and agricultural production: Evidence from rural households in Niger

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dc.creatorWouterse, Fleur Stephanie
dc.date2016-02-19
dc.date2024-06-21T09:23:01Z
dc.date2024-06-21T09:23:01Z
dc.date.accessioned2026-06-27T15:44:36Z
dc.descriptionNiger is a landlocked Sahelian country, two-thirds of which is in the Sahara desert, with only one-eighth of the land considered arable. Nevertheless, more than 90 percent of Niger’s labor force is employed in agriculture, which is predominantly subsistence oriented. Since the great famines of the 1970s and 1980s, the country has pursued agrarian intensification through technological change to address challenges to the food security situation. However, this approach has failed to recognize that the main characteristic of the Sahelian part of West Africa is the intricate complexity of the social, environmental, and economic dimensions that differentially affect male and female rural dwellers. One example is the patrilineal tenure system, which under increased population pressure has led to the exclusion of women and youth from agriculture in some areas. The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) indicates that access to land is one important dimension of empowerment. In order to assess the role of empowerment in agricultural production, we use new household- and individual-level WEAI data from Niger and regression analysis. Our results show that empowerment is important for agricultural production and that households in which adult individuals are more empowered are more productive. This means that other and possibly more effective pathways to agrarian intensification exist and important agricultural productivity gains could be made by empowering men and women in rural households.
dc.formatapplication/pdf
dc.identifierhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/147545
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/123456789/113357
dc.languageen
dc.publisherInternational Food Policy Research Institute
dc.relationhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/154140
dc.relationhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/149435
dc.relationhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/142001
dc.relationhttps://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2017.1408797
dc.rightsOpen Access
dc.sourceWouterse, Fleur Stephanie. 2016. Empowerment and agricultural production: Evidence from rural households in Niger. IFPRI Discussion Paper 1509. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://hdl.handle.net/10568/147545
dc.subjectgender
dc.subjectwomen's empowerment
dc.subjectagricultural production
dc.subjecthouseholds
dc.subjectproductivity
dc.subjectintensification
dc.subjectwomen
dc.titleEmpowerment and agricultural production: Evidence from rural households in Niger
dc.typeWorking Paper

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Instituto Internacional de Investigación sobre Políticas Alimentarias (IFPRI)