SP D3: Gender and Agricultural Commercialization

The agri-food system transformation in developing countries entails the adoption of new technologies and increasing rates of commercialization, which may have implications for intra-household resource allocation. As men usually control returns from cash crops, commercialization may come at the expense of women who mostly control subsistence income. Such changes in gender roles and income control can also have effects on child welfare and household food security. Such issues are analyzed in Subproject D3. The intra-household perspective here complements the farm household and rural economy perspectives in Subprojects D1 and D2. Building on survey data from developing countries, food security and nutrition effects of household participation in high-value markets are analyzed. Moreover, the survey data are complemented by framed field experiments, to examine the impacts of agricultural commercialization on women's bargaining power and intra-household resource distribution.

Topics of doctoral research:

• Gender-based price discrimination: do modern value chains help or hurt?
• Welfare effects of modern value chains: does the gender of the marketer matter?
• Drivers of gender discrimination in output markets: experimental evidence

Doctoral researchers involved:

Doctoral researchers of the first cohort:
Debosree Banerjee

Doctoral researchers of the second cohort:
Lutz Depenbusch

Doctoral researchers of the third cohort:
Liza von Grafenstein

Principal investigators/supervisors:
Stephan Klasen, Marcela Ibanez