# **6.2 Relaxing the overlapping support**

Ñopo (2008) suggested a methodology to relax the overlapping support assumption. The motivation for his work was the existing segregation into specific industries and occupations based on gender and workers' characteristics. In the context of agricultural productivity, the methodology can be applied given that female managers tend to be segregated to produce specific crops in the vicinity of their homes. Meanwhile, as described in section 2, cultural norms might restrict roles played by each gender. For instance, better market accessibility for males might explain higher participation in cash and export crops. A suggested extension to the present work consists of applying Ñopo's (2008) methodology. This should increase the proportion of the productivity gap explained.

# **7 Conclusions**

This study benefits from recent data collection efforts that are part of the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) - Integrated Surveys on Agriculture Project. Improvements in data quality in this less developed context are important tools to advance in the understanding of development-relevant questions such as the gender differences in agricultural productivity.

Evidence presented in this paper confirms the existence of gender differences in productivity that has been documented in the literature. Estimates of a statistically significant gap of 23.4 percent between male and female managers are reduced to 13.4 percent (statistically insignificant) after accounting for differences in managers' characteristics, land attributes, and access to productive resources. The unexplained portion of the gap is large with respect to previous studies in the SubSaharan context. A reduction of the gender gap is found after analyzing the difference along the distribution of productivity, showing higher inequality in the middle of the productivity distribution. Furthermore, it is in the left-tail of the productivity distribution where endowment differentials explain the largest share of the overall gender differences. This indicates that at lower levels of productivity, returns to factors of production are similar for men and women and the gender gap is largely due to lower access to resources for women.

The detailed decomposition is a powerful tool from a policy perspective since it allows identifying the sources that generate higher portions of the endowment and structure components of the decomposition. The analysis suggests that differences in land size, household’s wealth level, household size, dependency ratio, production in rented fields, and manager's involvement through time use in agriculture are the most relevant components of the endowment differences. With respect to the structure effect, years of schooling, access to extension services, product diversification, use of non-labor inputs (mainly fertilizers), and land characteristics (mainly distance to household) are some of the components that display unequal returns between both groups.

Solving gender inequality is a challenging problem on several grounds. In the agricultural context, it is of great importance in countries with low levels of development where poor households heavily rely on agriculture for their livelihood. Improving gender equality could boost agricultural growth and greatly contribute to the reduction of poverty and advance towards food security. As a result, research that improves information about sources of inequality is crucial in this task.

# **References**

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