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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 8, No. 8
Publication Date: August 25, 2021
DOI:10.14738/assrj.88.10681. Ayodeji, A. O., Rauf, A. J., & Lobley, M. (2021). Effect of Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture on Rural Households Food
Security: A Case Study of Oyo State, Nigeria. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(8). 600-615.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Effect of Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture on Rural
Households Food Security: A Case Study of Oyo State, Nigeria
Abiola Oyeboade Ayodeji
University of Exeter, United Kingdom
Department of Agricultural Administration
Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta, Nigeria
Ayodeji J. Rauf
National Agricultural Seed Council
Matt Lobley
University of Exeter, United Kingdom
ABSTRACT
Empowering women in agriculture is considered a prerequisite to achieving global
food security. However, there exists a research gap due to limited empirical studies
to ascertain this, especially in nations like Nigeria where high level of food
insecurity and gender inequality is perceived. Therefore, this study examines the
effect women’s empowerment in agriculture has on household food security. The
study was carried out in Oyo State, Nigeria and a sample size of 100 rural women
was drawn using the multi-stage sampling technique. Data was collected using a
semi-structured questionnaire through an interview schedule. Data analysed was
done using descriptive statistics, abbreviated women’s empowerment index, food
security index and logistic regression model. Findings from this study revealed that
more than half (58%) of the women were disempowered and about 59% of the
households were food insecure. By disintegrating women’s empowerment into its
various domains, this study identified that the major contributors to
disempowerment are time(workload), production and resource domain. The
logistic regression result shows that women’s empowerment in agriculture
positively influences household food security. The study recommends that women
must be adequately empowered in order mitigate food insecurity. Finally, the study
suggests further research should be carried out to determine the gender parity in
agriculture to understand the women’s empowerment in comparison with men’s
empowerment in individual households.
Keywords: Women’s empowerment; agriculture; food security; rural household
INTRODUCTION
Achieving food security is one of the major goals of our world today, and many efforts have been
channelled towards attaining this. In fact, many development organisations such as FAO1 and
USAID2 have “ending hunger and malnutrition” as their core goals. This is because food is a
1 Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations
2 United States Agency for International Development
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Ayodeji, A. O., Rauf, A. J., & Lobley, M. (2021). Effect of Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture on Rural Households Food Security: A Case Study of
Oyo State, Nigeria. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(8). 600-615.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.88.10681
basic necessity for a healthy and productive life. Also, they see achieving global food security as
an end goal and a means to an end. That is, attaining food security will help to accomplish other
development indicators such as good health and wellbeing, economic growth, and poverty
reduction (FAO, 2018). Food security is said to exist when every individual at all time have
access to enough, safe and nutritive diet required to meet their food preferences and dietary
need for a healthy and active life (Pinstrup-Andersen, 2009). The problem of food security is
complicated with issues such as volatility of food prices, the adverse effect of climate change on
food production, conversion of food crops to biofuels in the major food-exporting nations, and
the negligence of agriculture in terms of investment in infrastructure (Agarwal, 2012). All these
challenges have stirred up renewed global interest in agriculture as a means of reducing the
barriers to food security and improve economic growth (Agarwal, 2012). Hence, the growing
realization of the need to boost the productivity of smallholder farmers, the majority of whom
are women in order to mitigate food insecurity (FAO, 2011).
Like in most developing nations, women make up about 50 percent of the total agricultural
labour force in Nigeria (FAO, 2011)
And they contribute tremendously to food production. However, empirical evidences show that
women farmers in Nigeria lag behind men with regards to agricultural productivity, chiefly due
to gender inequality in respect of access to, control over and utilisation of productive resources
such as land, livestock, financial services, technology, education and extension services (Diiro
et al., 2018; FAO, 2011; Rahman, 2008). The inequality in access to land is particularly severe
in Nigeria, due to cultural norms and traditions that restrict women from inheriting land
(Akanle & Ewajesu, 2017).This limited land ownership by female farmers hinders them from
accessing formal credit because land is a major form of collateral (Amanda et al., 2006). Other
gender inequalities evident in Nigeria's agricultural sector include limited access to labour and
agricultural markets (Doss et al., 2011; FAO, 2011; Rahji & Falusi, 2005) and less control over
the use of revenue from agricultural production (Gates, 2014). All these challenges limits
women farmers’ productivity level. Despite these constraints women still play important roles
at every stage of the food system; as food producers (farmers), consumers, stabilisers of food
access, and caretakers of household food and nutrition security (Quisumbing et al., 1995;
Rahman, 2008). Also, women are believed to invest about 10 times more than men do in their
families' wellbeing, especially in areas like children’s healthcare, education, and nutrition
(Duflo, 2012; Maertens & Verhofstadt, 2013; Quisumbing & Maluccio, 2000). This
fundamentally suggests that empowering women, that is, enabling them to make strategic life
choices in areas where this ability has been previously denied can have a direct impact on both
their agricultural productivity and household food security (Harper et al., 2013; Sraboni et al.,
2014). However, there are few empirical studies to ascertain this. Hence, this study was carried
out to ascertain the impact empowerment of women in agriculture have on rural household
food security using Oyo State, Nigeria as a case study.
MEASURING WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT IN AGRICULTURE
According to Kabeer (1999), empowerment is the ability to make strategic life choices in areas
where the ability has been previously denied. Alsop et al.,(2006) describe empowerment as the
process of improving individual's or group's capacity to make deliberate decisions and
transform those decisions into desired actions and outcomes. From these two definitions, it can
be inferred that empowerment is mainly about expansion of freedom to make strategic choices
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and actions that shape one's life. However, women’s empowerment is subjective to individual
personality, aspirations, culture, and experiences (Alkire et al., 2013). Therefore, it is important
to note that the definition of women’s empowerment can be limited if focused on just
individual choices, especially in a cultural context where community and mutuality are valued
(Alkire et al., 2013). Hence, development and government agencies working towards
empowering women must acknowledge the complexity of empowering women and put their
societal institutions into consideration.
Different measures have been used to estimate women's empowerment generally in the past
but there was no specific instrument to measure women’s empowerment in agriculture until
2012 when a survey-based Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) was developed
by IFPRI 3 in conjunction with United State government’s Feed the Future programme to
facilitate the monitoring, evaluation, and diagnoses of women’s empowerment, agency, and
inclusion in the agricultural sector (Alkire et al., 2013). The WEAI comprises of five domains of
empowerment; production, resources, income, leadership and time, and ten indicators are used
in measuring them (Alkire et al., 2013). However, after the first set of field survey there was a
review of the first WEAI and a shorter, streamlined version known as A-WEAI4 was coined out.
The A- WEAI retains the five domains of empowerment, but the ten indicators were reduced to
six indicators. In using the A-WEAI there are stated aggregation method, inadequacy cut-offs,
and weight attached to each of the five domains and their indicators (Table I).
Table I: The domains, indicators, inadequacy cut-offs, and weights in the A-WEAI
Dimension Indicator
Name
Inadequacy cut-off Weight
Production Input in
productive
decisons
Inadequate if individual participates but does not
have at least some input in decisions or she does not
make the decisions nor feels she could
1/5
Resources Ownership of
assets
Access to and
decisions on
credit
Inadequate if household does not own any asset or if
household owns the type of asset but she/he does not
own most of it alone
Inadequate if household has no credit or used a
source of credit but she/he did not participate in any
decisions about it
2/15
1/15
Income Control over
use of income
Inadequate if a person participates in activity but has
little or no input in decisions about income generated
or does not feel she/she can make decisions regarding
wage, employment and major household expenditure
1/5
Leadership Group
membership
Inadequate if a person is not part of at least one group
or if no group reported in the community
1/5
Time Workload Inadequate if a person works more 10.5 hours per
day
1/5
Source: Malapit et al., (2015)
3 International Food Policy Research Institute 4 Abbreviated Women’s Empowermentin Agriculture Index
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Ayodeji, A. O., Rauf, A. J., & Lobley, M. (2021). Effect of Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture on Rural Households Food Security: A Case Study of
Oyo State, Nigeria. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(8). 600-615.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.88.10681
METHODOLOGY
The research was carried out in Oyo State, Southwest Nigeria (Figure I). It covers a total land
area of 28,454 square kilometres with an estimated population of 5,591,589 people, comprising
2,778,462 females and 2,802,432 males (National Population Commission, 2006). Oyo State has
33 local government areas, which is domicile by the Yoruba ethnic group. The major occupation
of people in the region is farming. Major food crops cultivated are maize, cassava, yam, okra,
cassava, and cash crops such as cocoa, mango, cashew, orange (Daud et al., 2018). The people
also rear small livestock animals such as goats, pigs, poultry, etc. at subsistence level.
Figure I: Map of Nigeria showing the study area, Oyo State.
Source: Adapted from Gamers (2018).
The study was carried out using a quantitative research method. Primary data for the study was
collected from the respondents with the aid of a semi-structured questionnaire through an
interview schedule. A multi-stage sampling technique was adopted to select the respondents.
The first stage involved a purposive selection of two local government areas (LGAs); Ido and
Atiba out of the 33 LGAs in the study area. These two LGAs were selected because they have
many rural communities with high number of women farmers. Stratified sampling technique
was used at the second stage to group the communities in the two LGAs into urban and rural
communities; the former was discarded. In the third stage, five villages were selected from the
rural communities in each of the two LGAs through a simple random sampling technique. This
made up ten villages namely; Lagbin, Koguo, Alajata, Akufo, Akinware, Ikolaba, Onre Bare,
Otefon, Lagunna, and Oridota. Finally, ten households were randomly selected in each of the ten
villages. This gave a sample size of 100 households. The respondents for the study were adult
female farmers in selected households.
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Prior to the commencement of the main data collection, a pilot survey was carried out in
Akanran village, Ona-ara LGA, Oyo State among non-sample respondents having similar
characteristics with the study area. This was done to ascertain the accuracy, efficiency and
adequacy of the research instrument. The data collected were analysed using descriptive
statistics, A-WEAI technique, food security index, and logit regression model. IBM SPSS
Statistics 20 and STATA 15 were used for the statistical analyses. Results from the analyses
were presented using tables and charts, and the detailed explanation of the analysis are stated
below.
The A-WEAI comprises two sub-indexes. The first assesses the degree to which women are
empowered in the five domains of empowerment (5DE) in agriculture and the second sub- index [the Gender Parity Index (GPI)] measures gender parity within households. The weight
of the 5DE and GPI sub-indexes are 90 percent and 10 percent, respectively, and the sum gives
A-WEAI score. However, for this study, we stopped at the measure of 5DE due to insufficient
time to collect data from men in the sampled households. For a woman to be categorised as
being empowered she must achieve adequacy in at least four of the 5DE or 80% of the
indicators of empowerment (Alkire et al., 2013).
The 5DE is given by “1 - M0” and was constructed in a way that both empowerment and
disempowerment can be analysed. A more detailed explanation of this can be found in Alkire et
al., (2013).
To identify disempowerment, the model is stated as;
Ci = w1I1i + w2I2i + ......+ wdIdi ............(1)
Where,
Idi= 1, if the person i has an inadequate achievement in indicator d and Idi = 0, if otherwise
wd= weight attached to indicator i (as shown in Table I)
ci= 0, where a person has no inadequacy on any indicator
Now, the five domains of disempowerment index (M0) was estimated by following the structure
of the Adjusted Headcount measure of (Alkire & Foster, 2011). M0 has two components
The first component is the disempowered headcount ratio (Hp): which is the proportion of
individuals whose share of weighted inadequacies is more than k (where k is the share of
inadequacies a woman must have to be considered disempowered).
Hp = q/n .......................................................(2)
Where,
q= number of individuals who are disempowered n= total population.
The second component is called the intensity of disempowerment (Ap): this is the average
inadequacy score of disempowered individuals. It can be expressed as follows;
Ap=∑qi=ci(k)
� =1 �
q ..................................... (3)
ci(k)= censored inadequacy score of individual i q= number of disempowered individuals.
M0= Hp ×Ap ...................................................(4) Finally, 5DE is obtained:
5DE= 1 - M0. .................................................(5)
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Ayodeji, A. O., Rauf, A. J., & Lobley, M. (2021). Effect of Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture on Rural Households Food Security: A Case Study of
Oyo State, Nigeria. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(8). 600-615.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.88.10681
Food security index: this was estimated using Omonona & Agoi's (2007) household food
expenditure method. The respondents were classified into food secure and food insecure
households.
The food security index formula is given by:
Ei= Per capita food expenditure for the ith household
2/3 mean per capita food expenditure of all households
Where Ei = Food Security Index
When Ei ≥ 1= food secure ith household
Ei ≤ 1= food insecure ith household.
This implies that for a household to be classified as food secure the per capita monthly food
expenditure must fall above or equal to two-thirds of the mean per capita food expenditure.
Conversely, a food insecure household is that whose per capita food expenditure falls below
two-thirds of the mean monthly per capita food expenditure. Furthermore, the headcount ratio
of food security was calculated for the sampled households based on the calculated food
security index (E). The headcount ratio (H) shows the proportion of food secure or insecure
households.
The headcount index is specified as:
Headcount Index (Hfoodsecure)= P/N
Headcount Index (Hfoodinsecure)= Q/N �
Where:
P= number of food insecure households; Q= number of food secure households
N= total number of households
Binary logistic regression
binary logistic model was used to examine the influence of respondent’s socio-economic
characteristics and women’s empowerment in agriculture on household food security. This
model was used because the dependent variable has two possible outcomes (dichotomous
variable), that is, food secure or food insecure households, labelled 1 and 0 respectively.
The explicit form of the model is expressed as:
H = β0 + β1empowerment + β2x1 + β3x2 + β4x3 + β5x4 + β6x5 +β7h1 + β8h2 + β9h3 + β10h4 + β11h5 +
ε ..................................... (2)
Where, H is a vector of food security outcome (1, if the household is food secured; 0, if the
household is food insecure); Β1, β2,.....βi are the estimated coefficients; x and h are vectors of
individual-level and household-level characteristics respectively.
Empowerment = (1, if empowered i.e. score ≥ 80% in 5DE score; 0, if otherwise)
x1= Age (years)
x2= Educational level (years)
x3= Years of farming experience (years)
x4= Annual Income (₦)
x5= Number of extensions contact (number)
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Ayodeji, A. O., Rauf, A. J., & Lobley, M. (2021). Effect of Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture on Rural Households Food Security: A Case Study of
Oyo State, Nigeria. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(8). 600-615.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.88.10681
are part of the reasons for low productivity in some plots cultivated by female farmers. This
essentially suggests that if these women are given the opportunities to make strategic farming
decisions, their productivity may increase.
In the study area, majority of the women (70%) enjoy adequacy in the access to and use of
credit indicator under the resource domain, that is, they have access to borrow at least ₦5000
(equivalent to US$13.82). This was unexpected, however, none of these credits were accessed
from formal lenders or non-governmental organisations. This is not surprising because formal
lending institutions, like commercial banks require collateral, mostly, in form of landed
properties which majority of these women do not solely possess. The women indicated that
they got their loans from family, relatives, rotating credit and saving groups. This is expected
since nearly half of them (43%) enjoys adequacy in the group membership indicator. To
buttress this, Gugerty (2007) suggests that one of the reasons for the high level of female
participation in groups such as rotating credit and savings associations/groups is because it is
a socially accepted strategy to save, and allows women to protect their savings from husbands
and other relatives especially where cultural norms and family dynamics limits women’s ability
to exercise control over their savings.
Furthermore, 43% and 45% have adequate achievement in the use of income and control of
asset indicators respectively. For those with inadequate achievement in their use of income,
their households’ food security is likely to be affected because as food managers in their
respective homes, the ability to control what to buy and feed the family is highly dependent on
income availability. With respect to asset ownership indicator under the resource domain,
majority of the women that enjoy adequate achievement possess mobile phone, small consumer
durables, poultry, and small livestock, while just few of them have agricultural land and/or
residential land. This lack of landed property clearly explains the reason for their inability to
access credit facilities from a formal financial institution. Lack of land ownership is mainly
caused by patriarchal gender norms which makes it difficult for women to acquire and retain
land (Schutter, 2013). Importantly, the lack of land ownership might be one of the reasons they
have little or no input in productive decisions.
Moving further to understand the overall level of women’s empowerment in agriculture in the
study area, table III was computed.
Table III: Computed level of women’s empowerment in the sampled households (n=100)
Women’s Empowerment indices Empowered Not empowered Total
Frequency 42 58 100
Percentage 42.0 58.0 100
Source: Computed from field survey, 2019
From table III, it can be observed that the percentage for the disempowered women (58%) is
greater than that of the empowered women (42%), thus establishing the presence of
disempowerment in the study area. This finding is similar to Alkire et al.,(2013) finding in
Bangladesh where the 5DE shows that 61% of the women were disempowered. Similarly,
Tsiboe et al., (2018) found that most women in Northern Ghana were disempowered. Thus,
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further establishing the prevalence of disempowerment amidst agrarian women in developing
nations.
The percentage contribution of each domain of empowerment and their respective indicator to
the women’s disempowerment were calculated and presented in figure II and Figure III
respectively.
Figure II. Percentage contribution of each of the five domains to women disempowerment in
the study area
Source: Field survey, 2019.
Figure II, shows that the greatest contribution to women’s disempowerment in the study area
is the time domain (31.5%), followed by the production domain (24.2%) while the lowest
contribution is the income domain (12.3%). Workload is the indicator used in the time domain
(Figure III). This inadequacy in time domain can be because women are saddled with many
farm and domestic work with no access to labour- saving technologies/devices. On the long run,
these women's time constraint from excessive workload will not just be a burden to them but
can also have negative effects on the general care and well-being of their families (Akter et al.,
2017). It is noteworthy that any intervention or policies that will increase workload or time
used by women should be avoided even if it can increase their income. The production domain
is another major contributor to women’s disempowerment. This is expected since 72% of the
respondents’ experience inadequacy in this domain. This is consistent with Agarwal's (2012)
report that women farmers have low or no input in productive decision.
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Ayodeji, A. O., Rauf, A. J., & Lobley, M. (2021). Effect of Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture on Rural Households Food Security: A Case Study of
Oyo State, Nigeria. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(8). 600-615.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.88.10681
Figure III: Percentage Contribution of each of the six domain indicators to women’s
disempowerment in the study area
Source: Field survey, 2019.
Figure II reveals that the resource domain contributes 17.8% to women’s disempowerment in
the study area, while figure III shows the contribution of each of the two indicators of this
domain: assets ownership and access to and control of credits. Ownership of assets emerges as
the indicator that contributes most to disempowerment under the resource’s domain. The
leadership domain, with indicator ‘group membership’ and income domain, with indicator
‘control of the use of income’ contribute 14.2% and 12.3% respectively. This finding is a little
bit different from that of Sraboni et al., (2014) in rural Bangladesh where the highest
contributor to women’s disempowerment is the leadership and resources domains, with 35.1%
and 21.6% contribution respectively. Also, in Guatemala, the greatest contributor is lack of
leadership in the community (23.7%) and control over the use of income (23.7%), while in
Ghana, the resources domain was found to be the highest contributor to women's
disempowerment (Alkire et al., 2013; Tsiboe et al., 2018). From this, it can be affirmed that
women’s empowerment is context-specific and cannot be treated as a homogenous entity
because the needs of women differ between regions, communities, and nations.
Food security status of the households
The households were categorised into food secure and food insecure households using the per
capita monthly food expenditure of the households. The per capita monthly food expenditure
was used to determine the food security line; which is the two-thirds of the mean per capita
food expenditure of all the sampled households (Omotesho et al., 2006).
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Table IV: Summary of the food security status of rural households
Food security indices Food secure Food insecure Total
Frequency 41 59 100
Percentage 41.0 59.0 100
Headcount ratio 0.41 0.59
2/3 Mean per capita food expenditure
(Food security line) equals ₦16,269
Source: Field survey, 2019.
The monthly mean per capita food expenditure for the whole households was ₦24,403, and the
two-thirds mean per capita food expenditure (food security line) was ₦16,269. This implies that
all households whose per capita food expenditure falls below ₦16,269 are food insecure. Table
IV shows that most (59%) of the households were food insecure while 41% were food secure.
Further using the headcount ratio, the food secure households were less (0.41) than the food
insecure households (0.59), thus establishing the prevalence of food insecurity in the study
area. This finding is consistent with Akerele et al., (2013) and Omotesho et al., (2006) who
reported that majority of the people living in rural households in Nigeria are food insecure.
Women’s empowerment factors influencing the food security status of the households
In order to examine the influence of women's empowerment in agriculture and their
socioeconomic characteristics on household food security status, the logistic regression model
was employed. The result of the women's empowerment factors on household food security
status is presented (Table V). Age, age squared, educational level, household size, and
empowerment are found to be statistically significant to the food security status in the study
area while the other variables appear not to be significant. Age, education, and empowerment
showed a positive relationship, while the other two variables exhibited negative relationship
with the household food security status.
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Ayodeji, A. O., Rauf, A. J., & Lobley, M. (2021). Effect of Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture on Rural Households Food Security: A Case Study of
Oyo State, Nigeria. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(8). 600-615.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.88.10681
Table V: Logistic regression result of the women’s empowerment factors influencing the food
security status of the households (n=100)
Explanatory Variables Coefficient Standard Error z P>|t|
Age 0.3207 0.1613 1.99 0.047**
Age square -0.0032 0.0014 -2.24 0.025**
Educational level 0.1925 0.0916 2.10 0.036**
Household Income 1.99e06 2.07e-06 0.96 0.336
Household size -0.9383 0.1908 -4.92 0.000***
Farm size -0.5548 0.0865 -0.64 0.521
Farming activity -1.0603 0.7447 -1.42 0.155
Farming years 0.0166 0.0554 0.30 0.765
Off-farm engagement -0.0213 0.6721 -0.03 0.975
Group membership 0.2511 0.6850 0.37 0.714
Extension contacts -0.1727 0.1323 -1.31 0.192
DEscore 1.4268 1.1411 1.01 0.312
Empowerment 2.1402 1.1480 1.86 0.062*
_cons -3.4001 3.5778 -0.95 0.342
Number of observations
Wald chi-square(13)
Probability >chi-square
Pseudo R-squared
Log pseudolikelihood
= 100
= 32.28
= 0.0022
= 0.4093
= -39.9814
Dependent variable: Food security indices *Significant at 10% **Significant at 5%
***Significant at 1%.
Source: Computer analysis of logit regression model, 2019.
The age and age squared, that is, the number of years the women have lived, educational status
of women, which is the number of years the women have spent in formal education and
household size, that is, the number of people living in the same household and eats from the
same food pot showed a significant positive relationship between the women’s age and their
household food security status at 5% significance level. This implies that the higher the age,
educational status, and household size of women the higher the chances of their household
being food secured.
Empowerment
This variable refers to the women that are empowered in the area (achieved ≥ 80% in the 5DE).
The model showed a statistically significant positive relationship between household food
security and empowered women at 10% significance level. By implication, the more the women
are empowered the better the chances of their household being food secure. Hence, women that
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are empowered are significantly more likely to have a food secure household. This finding is in
line with that of Tsiboe et al.,(2018) and Sraboni et al., (2014), where it was found that increase
in the level of women’s empowerment in agriculture is positively associated with dietary
diversity and calorie level at the household level.
The result further showed the overall logistic model was statistically significant based on the
chi-square (p=0.0022, significant at 1%), implying that the explanatory variables are relevant
in determining the household food security status. Based on this result, the two null
hypotheses; ‘the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents have no significant effect on
their household food security’. and ‘women’s empowerment in agriculture has no significant
impact on food security in rural households’ are both rejected.
CONCLUSION AND POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
Asides from women being a major part of the agricultural labour force, they also assume various
responsibilities along the food system. Using the A-WEAI, this study estimated the level of
women’s empowerment in agriculture in Oyo State, Nigeria and found that 58% of the women
were disempowered. By disintegrating the A-WEAI, the study identified time, production and
resources domain as the major contributors to disempowerment in the study area. This is
slightly different from the main contributor to disempowerment in Ghana, Guatemala, and
Bangladesh (Alkire et al., 2013; Tsiboe et al., 2018). By implication, interventions aimed at
empowering women should take note of this heterogeneity in order to achieve positive
outcome. Evidently, time, production and resources domains are the most promising areas for
intervention by policymakers, government, and non-governmental agencies that aim to
increase women's empowerment in this region. Also, this study found that majority of the
sampled households were food insecure. This points to the fact that two important SDGs5 - goal
2 and goal 5; ‘zero hunger’ and ‘gender equality’ respectively, are far from being achieved in the
area. This calls for urgent interventions to curb these challenges if the SDGs must be achieved
before 2030.
Importantly, this study contributes significantly to the existing body of knowledge by providing
an empirical evidence on the direct positive linkage between women's empowerment in
agriculture and food security in rural households. This signifies that empowering women is an
important tool that can be used to mitigate food insecurity.
The study equally revealed that some socioeconomic characteristics of the women such as age,
educational level, and household size also influences household food security. These should be
carefully put into consideration when making policies and legislations. By implication, there is
a need to overcome these barriers in order to increase women’s empowerment and
subsequently improve household food security status. Based on these findings, this study
recommends the following priority areas to the government and other strategic decision
makers:
(i) Increase in level of female’s educational attainment
The level of female literacy in this region should be deliberately increased because education
has a direct impact on their general standard of living. The low level of female education is
from the archaic belief that “No matter the level of a woman’s education, she will end up in her
5 Sustainable Development Goals
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613
Ayodeji, A. O., Rauf, A. J., & Lobley, M. (2021). Effect of Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture on Rural Households Food Security: A Case Study of
Oyo State, Nigeria. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(8). 600-615.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.88.10681
husband’s kitchen’ and ‘educated women do not respect their husbands” (Aderinto, 2001 pp.181),
hence, reducing parents’ drive to towards girl’s education. In order to improve female’s
education, there is a need to go beyond building schools to changing the orientation of rural
dwellers towards female education. This can be done through rigorous awareness and
campaign on the importance of female education. It requires collective efforts from all the major
stakeholders. This should be backed up with policies that enforces every girl child to have
access to elementary education. With this, the level of women’s education will increase. Similar
intervention done in Afghanistan under the ‘'back to school campaign' launched in 2002 and
led to enrolment of 2.4 million girls in 2009 from initial 5,000 girls (Jackson, 2011). In addition,
government should make adequate provision for free primary and secondary education in the
rural communities.
(ii) Provision of labour-saving technologies/reduction of women’s workload
There is the need for interventions that brings about accessible, cost-friendly and labour saving
technologies such as row-weeders, crop processors, and so on. This can be made available to
the women through the social groups they belong to. This type of intervention was carried out
by CASCAPE6 in Hawassa, Ethiopia and it significantly reduced women’s time-use (CASCAPE,
2017). Also, policymakers should scrutinise every interventions, legislations or policies to
certify that they are not increasing the women’s workload. For instance, providing women with
access to land, without supports in form of credit facilities to hire labour or rent machinery such
as tractor might end up increasing the workload of women. Therefore, any intervention that
increases the income of the women but still adds to their workload directly or indirectly should
be tactically avoided.
(iii) Strengthen women’s access to land and resources
Law reform are required to abolish cultures and norms that forbid women from owning lands.
This recommendation is supported by UN Women's (2013) briefing. Also, women should not
be required to present a male guarantor before being qualified to leased farmland. Supports in
terms of productive resources like seeds, fertilizer, sprayer, processing machines, etc. should
be provided by the government through subsidies.
Finally, further research to determine the level of gender parity in agriculture in individual
households is needed. This will provide a smart viewpoint for comparison between women’s
empowerment/disempowerment in relation to their male counterpart. There is also the need
to replicate this type of study on an extensive scale in the remaining five geopolitical zones in
Nigeria because the culture and access to productive resources varies across these regions.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study;
in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the
decision to publish the results.
Acknowledgment
This research was funded by University of Exeter, United Kingdom and Commonwealth
Scholarship
6 CASCAPE - Capacity building for scaling up of evidence-based best practices in agricultural production in Ethiopia
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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 8, Issue 8, August-2021
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
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