simply using the household head as the default plot’s manager. Handheld Global Positioning System (GPS) devices were used to collect information on plot sizes and the location of households, which allows not only a more accurate measure of land size but an ability to link the data with geospatial variables from other data sources.

The analysis in the paper focuses on 2,431<sup>4</sup> agricultural households farming 4,240 plots with GPS plot measurement over 100 square meters and information on plot manager’s age and education level. Of the 4,240 plots, 15 percent were managed by females.<sup>5</sup> It is also common for plot managers to manage multiple plots, with 65.7 percent of managers managing more than 1 plot. Not unexpectedly, this is more common for male managers.<sup>6</sup> Table 1 shows the distribution of the plot manager’s gender by the six geopolitical zones in the country. As seen from the table, there are more female managers in the Southern zones compared to the Northern zones. The South East zone has the highest proportion of female managers and the North West zone has the lowest proportion.

Given the few female managed plots in the North West and South West in our sample, our analysis excludes the West of the country. We also exclude Niger and Abuja states because there are no female managed plots in our sample in these two states, reducing our sample size to 2,995 plots. In addition, our preliminary analysis shows significant differences between the North and South of the country, reflecting the general socioeconomic and agro-ecological differences across the two regions. For these reasons, we analyze the North and the South separately given the expectation that they differ.

Although agriculture production information was collected at the crop level, the crop harvest values are aggregated to the plot level in order to estimate production for each plot. Productivity is measured as the monetary (Naira) value of all crops grown on the plot under the manager’s purview.<sup>7</sup> Table 2 presents the average productivity for male and female managers in Nigeria and separately for the North and South regions. Tables 3 and 4 provide the summary statistics of the value of plot harvest per hectare, the relevant explanatory variables, and the results of the test of mean difference between the male and female managers for the included North and South regions, respectively.

# _North Central and North East_

Looking at the North Central and North East regions (Table 3), the value of harvest on male managed plots is higher <mark>(₦134,689)</mark> and significantly different from the value of harvest on

> 4 We limited the sample to households that were present in both the post planting and post-harvest visit of the GHSPanel 2010/11 (There are about 4-5 months between visits). Furthermore, we focused on the agricultural households for which complete information of GPS plot measurement and production estimates are available. We dropped plots of less than 0.1 hectares and all plots in Enugu state due to issues with the GPS land measurement in that state.

> 5 For almost all the male managed plots (98.7%), the manager is also identified as the head of the households. However, for female managed plots, only for 52.1 percent of plots are also the head of the households.

> 6 67.8 percent of male managers claim at least 2 plots compared with 52.9 percent of female managers.

> 7 The Naira value of harvest on each plot was calculated by multiplying the quantity of harvest in kilograms of each crop on the plot by the median sales value of the crop in each local government area (LGA) and aggregating to the plot level. In cases where we don’t have enough observations in the LGA, we use the value at the next geographical level, zone, state and country as needed. For our main dependent variable, value of harvest per hectare, we divide the value of harvest by the GPS reported plot size.

6