Ms. A.F. (Aïfa) Ndoye Niane: Economics of Gender, Risk and Labour in Horticultural Households in Senegal

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16 Jun 2010 11:00
Unit: Wageningen University
Location: Aula, building 362, Gen. Foulkesweg 1, Wageningen
Organisation: Wageningen University
Promotor: Prof.dr.ir. E.H. Bulte
Co Promotor: Dr. C.P.J. Burger

 The importance of agriculture to the economic development in Africa and the critical role that rural women play within this sector still remain an attractive research agenda. Due to customary norms, women’s access and control over the resources of production are limited. Farm households involved in horticulture in Senegal, provide a convenient context to illuminate such gender issues in agricultural development. Usually, within horticultural households, husbands and wives manage separate plots and in a context of high volatility of output market price. Next to household labour, the plot managers hire labour, under a sharecropping contract or a wage contract.

The findings show that with an average of 460 m2, women’s plots are 5 times smaller than men’s plots are. However, women are as efficient as men are. Women face output market price risk but are not more risk-averse than men. Moreover, the more men and women are risk-averse, the more they allocate their inputs inefficiently and the more they would prefer to hire labour based on a sharecropping contract rather than a wage contract. Nevertheless, the use of labour-saving technologies like the motor pump for irrigation drives out sharecropping contract in favour of wage contract.

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