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What do we mean by ‘women’s crops’? A mixed methods approach(Series paper Number 23)

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Relation http://oar.icrisat.org/8331/
 
Title What do we mean by ‘women’s crops’? A mixed methods approach(Series paper Number 23)
 
Creator Orr, A
Tsusaka, T W
Kee-Tui, S H
Msere, H
 
Subject Others
 
Description A ‘Women’s Crop Tool’ was developed to measure women’s control over decision-making
for crop production, sales, and use of income. We tested the tool for groundnuts in Eastern
Province, Zambia, using a mixed methods approach that involved Focus Group Discussions
(FGDs) and a quantitative household survey. Women in FGDs reported higher levels of
control than women in the household survey. We argue that the more extreme results from
the FGDs are due to the nature of the research question over the ‘power to name’. FGDs
provided a public space for a struggle over meaning that exposed latent conflicts over
gender roles, gender identities, and the conjugal contract. Mechanization of groundnut
shelling has increased male participation in this activity. We used Propensity Score Matching
(PSM) to determine whether the introduction of shelling machines reduced women’s control
over groundnuts, as measured by the weighted women’s gender control index (WGCI),
constructed by aggregating the scores obtained from the Women’s Crop Tool. Results
showed that the shelling machine significantly increased the women’s WGCI, while the area
planted to groundnuts and the volume of groundnut sales had no significant effect on the
women’s WGCI. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, therefore, the commercialization of
groundnuts has not reduced women’s control over groundnuts, while women perceived that
the introduction of the machine sheller had increased their control over decision-making.
 
Publisher ICRISAT
 
Date 2014
 
Type Socioeconomics Discussion Paper Series
NonPeerReviewed
 
Format application/pdf
 
Language en
 
Rights —
 
Identifier http://oar.icrisat.org/8331/1/ISEDPS_23_2014.pdf
Orr, A and Tsusaka, T W and Kee-Tui, S H and Msere, H (2014) What do we mean by ‘women’s crops’? A mixed methods approach(Series paper Number 23). [Socioeconomics Discussion Paper Series]