Effect of Group and Leader Attributes on Men and Women Farmers’ Participation in Group Activities in Zambia

Kelvin Mulungu and Netsayi Noris Mudege

Feminist Economics, 2020, vol. 26, issue 4, 178-204

Abstract: Since development agencies often implement interventions through collective-action groups such as farmer cooperatives and self-help groups, there is a need to understand how participation is affected by group-level and leader attributes. This study collected gender-disaggregated, quantitative and qualitative data on sixty-eight self-help groups in Zambia to understand the participation of men and women farmers in different crop-production activities. Results show that participation rates of men and women are the same across all maize production activities except harvesting. The gender composition of members influenced men’s and women’s participation in group activities: when men were fewer in a group, they (men) participated more, while when more women were in a group (above 53 percent), the women participated less. Leader’s education level, knowledge of group agenda, and frequency of meetings also affected participation rates. To design collective action groups that promote gender equity outcomes, gender composition of groups should be considered.HIGHLIGHTS Agricultural collective-action groups assembled by development organizations attempt to bolster women’s participation and leadership within the group and the community.These empowerment groups may inadvertently reproduce traditional gender labor roles, particularly when membership increases women’s workload.Attention to group dynamics demonstrates that minority group members – who are usually men – work harder and overperform due to their increased visibility within the group. Thus, increasing women’s numbers in groups has not aided the goal of increasing their participation.Policymakers should consider the gender composition of the group, labor roles, time commitment of participation, and leader attributes when forming collective-action groups in order to achieve gender-equity outcomes.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13545701.2020.1791926 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:femeco:v:26:y:2020:i:4:p:178-204

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RFEC20

DOI: 10.1080/13545701.2020.1791926

Access Statistics for this article

Feminist Economics is currently edited by Diana Strassmann

More articles in Feminist Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().