households are 40.2 percent less productive than male managers who are also head of households. The gender difference is not significant for the South. Alternatively, we aggregated our analysis to the household level assigning the characteristics of the head. We found a much bigger gap at the household level in the North with a gap of 50 percent.<sup>20</sup> This could indicate that female managers in female headed households are worse off than female managers in male headed households. The difference remains insignificant for the South.

Given that 56 and 34 percent of male managers and female managers manage at least two plots respectively, we also examine productivity differences at the manager level by aggregating yield for each manager. We find that the gender differences are higher at the manager level compared with the plot level for the North. In the North region, male managers are 37.5 percent more productive than female managers while the results for the South are still insignificant even at the manager level.

# **7. Conclusion**

In this paper, we examine gender-based productivity differences in Nigeria using a nationally representative data set. We examine if there are productivity differentials across male and female managed plots as well as which factors in the production process seem to be driving them. Given that agro-ecological and socioeconomic conditions differ so substantially across the North and South these are analyzed independently. Our analysis indicates that after controlling for observed manager characteristics and factors of production women in the North produce 27.4 percent less than men. We find that the unexplained portion of the gender gap in the North is bigger than the explained portion at the mean suggesting that even if provided with the same level of inputs, significant differences between the productivity of men and women would still emerge. This does not mean that women would not benefit from additional inputs, but that this will not completely make up differences.

In the South, statistically significant differences between the productivity of male and female plot managers productivity are not found once we control for observed factors of production. When the conditional differences are decomposed, we find that the endowment effect is more important than the structural effect indicating that access to resources explains most of the gender gap. In the South then, if women are given the same level of inputs as men the gap diminishes. Even though men use more input than women in general, women have smaller land plots and, as is generally the case on smaller plots, tend to use inputs at a higher proportional rate. If women’s access to land assets were similar in the South, the gap between men and women would be much wider.

Overall, the results confirm our hypotheses that gender relationships differ across the North and South. The results mirror those found by Peterman et al. (2011), who found differences in the gender productivity link across agro-ecological zone in northern Nigeria, and Oladeebo and Fajuyigbe (2007) who find no statistically significant difference in the South-West. As such, it

> 20 We lost lose some plots at the household level because of incomplete data.

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