Addressing Gender Inequality in Agricultural Trade

Women make up a substantial share of the agricultural workforce across the developing world – yet they consistently earn less, own less land, and have far less say in decisions that shape agricultural trade. This isn’t just a social issue. It’s an economic one. Gender inequality in agriculture directly limits productivity, weakens trade performance, and holds back inclusive growth. Addressing it requires more than awareness – it requires targeted policies, reformed institutions, and a genuine shift in how agricultural trade systems are designed.

Women’s role in agriculture: large contribution, limited recognition 🔗

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), over one-third of the world’s working women are employed in agrifood systems, covering everything from food production to storage, processing, and distribution. In parts of southern Asia, that figure rises to 71 percent of all working women. Yet despite this scale of participation, women’s contributions are systematically undercounted and undervalued.

FAO’s analysis of country-level agricultural trade data shows that women are responsible for between 60 and 90 percent of total food production in many developing nations. Their unpaid work on family farms – sustenance activities, post-harvest handling, food provision – rarely appears in national accounts. This invisibility means agricultural policies are often designed without accounting for women’s actual roles, leaving them structurally excluded from trade-oriented development.

The productivity gap: not a matter of skill, but of access 🔗

A common misconception is that women farmers are less productive than their male counterparts. Research from UN Women across sub-Saharan African countries confirms that gender gaps in agricultural productivity do not stem from women being less efficient farmers, but from inequitable access to inputs – including family labour, high-yield crops, fertilizers, and extension services.

The FAO’s 2023 report on gender and agrifood systems puts a precise number on this disparity: a 24 percent gap in productivity exists between women and men farming plots of equal size, driven solely by differential access to knowledge and resources. Women in agricultural employment also earn nearly 20 percent less than men in the same sector. Closing both these gaps, FAO projects, would increase global GDP by close to $1 trillion and reduce the number of food-insecure people by 45 million.

How gender inequality undermines agricultural trade 🔗

The connection between gender inequality and trade performance is direct. When women farmers are locked out of productive resources, agricultural output stays below its potential – and so does export capacity. A cross-country study published by VoxDev found that countries with higher barriers against women in non-agricultural industries tend to exhibit lower agricultural productivity, because the misallocation of female talent between sectors depresses output per worker economy-wide.

FAO’s review of agricultural trade liberalization highlights a particularly important tension: as developing countries orient their policies toward export production, women smallholders in the subsistence sector are often the ones left behind. When land and labour shift to export crops, women may be pushed off the plots that form the basis of household food security. In Uganda, for instance, women engaged in the export sector are frequently excluded from the marketing process entirely, meaning household income from exports often stays in male hands.

The “double burden” of trade liberalization 🔗

Trade liberalization, when not designed with gender in mind, can worsen women’s situation. According to FAO’s country case studies, when governments shift agricultural land and labour toward export crop production, women face a “double burden” – they are expected to earn income in the export sector while still fulfilling their role as primary food providers at home. The wages they receive in the export sector are typically low and unskilled, rarely compensating for what they lose in subsistence production capacity. This dynamic compounds existing inequalities rather than resolving them.

Structural barriers blocking women’s participation in trade 🔗

Several interconnected barriers prevent women from fully participating in agricultural trade. A joint WTO-World Bank report on women and trade notes that trade policies can affect men and women differently, with women facing systematically higher obstacles to participation in the global economy. These obstacles operate at multiple levels.

Land rights and ownership 🔗

FAO estimates that globally, fewer than 15 percent of primary agricultural landholders are women. In Sub-Saharan Africa specifically, only 13 percent of landholders are women, as customary systems often override statutory guarantees of equal land rights. This matters for trade because without land titles, women cannot use land as collateral to access credit, cannot invest in productivity improvements, and are often excluded from cooperatives and formal market channels that require land ownership for membership.

Research from Landesa confirms that for women, lack of secure land rights is directly linked to reduced access to credit, extension services, and inclusion in agricultural programming – creating a reinforcing cycle that keeps women’s farms smaller and less trade-competitive.

Access to credit and finance 🔗

Financial exclusion is another critical barrier. A 2014 study cited in ORF’s analysis of agricultural value chains found that 86 percent of women-led enterprises report unmet credit demand, compared to 72 percent for men. Legal barriers, cultural norms, lack of collateral, and institutional bias all contribute to this gap. Microfinance programmes that do exist often provide loans too small to fund machinery, infrastructure, or market-scale operations – keeping women-owned agricultural businesses confined to subsistence rather than trade-oriented production.

Decision-making and market access 🔗

In many agricultural systems, gender norms position men as the default decision-makers, landowners, and market participants, while women’s roles are treated as supplementary even when they perform the majority of the labour. Women may sell at the farm gate rather than in formal markets due to time constraints from household responsibilities, social restrictions on travel, or lack of information about price discovery. As noted in research published in PMC, social norms can make it harder for women to negotiate effectively with male traders, limiting their returns even when they do reach market.

The trade policy dimension: where gender gets overlooked 🔗

The WTO’s monitoring of Aid for Trade programmes reveals a structural disconnect: while 92 percent of developing countries include women’s economic empowerment in their Aid for Trade objectives, gender has not been fully integrated into their actual trade priorities. Between 2006 and 2017, gender-specific programmes received less than 1 percent of total Aid for Trade disbursements of $300 billion. The gap between stated objectives and actual resource allocation is stark.

Scholars examining the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture point out that Article 6.2 – the “development box” – gives developing countries flexibility to provide input subsidies to poor farmers. If applied with a gender lens, this provision could directly support female farmers in accessing seeds, fertilizers, and other essential inputs. The FAO’s own estimates suggest that if women had access to productive resources at the same level as men, they could increase their output by 20 to 30 percent. Yet very few countries have used this mechanism explicitly to target women – the Gambia’s 2016 fertilizer distribution to female farmers is a rare example.

Trade liberalization and its uneven effects 🔗

Not all trade liberalization outcomes are negative for women, but they are consistently uneven. Oxfam’s research on gender and food insecurity notes that agricultural assistance programmes – including prominent initiatives like the G20-World Bank agricultural fund and the US Feed the Future programme – focused on “market-ready” farmers, who are predominantly male, bypassing women smallholders who may have equal potential but face structural disadvantages. This design bias means even well-funded trade and food security programmes can inadvertently deepen gender inequality.

Policy solutions for gender-inclusive agricultural trade 🔗

Closing the gender gap in agricultural trade is achievable – but it requires deliberate, coordinated action across legal, financial, and institutional fronts. UN Women’s FAO deputy regional representative for Europe and Central Asia has emphasised that policies must recognise and address women’s specific needs in agriculture, including access to resources, training, technology, land ownership, and financial services – alongside inclusion in decision-making at all levels.

Land and legal reform 🔗

Strengthening women’s land rights and access to credit delivers compounding benefits: higher agricultural productivity, economic growth, enhanced food security, and climate resilience. Rwanda’s comprehensive land reforms – giving women equal rights to own and inherit land – serve as a clear example. Women’s participation in agricultural cooperatives increased by 41 percent following the reforms, accompanied by measurable gains in productivity. Governments must ensure that statutory land rights for women are not undermined by customary systems, and that land registration processes are gender-sensitive in practice, not just on paper.

Financial inclusion for women farmers 🔗

Banking and credit policies need to be redesigned with women’s realities in mind. Collateral alternatives, women-friendly loan products, and digital financial tools can help bridge the access gap. In India, the Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile (JAM) framework has been cited as a model for integrating land records, bank accounts, and digital identities – enabling women to access institutional finance and invest in productivity-enhancing technologies. Microfinance and self-help group models have shown consistent positive associations with women’s economic resilience and involvement in agricultural value chains when properly designed and scaled.

Gender-responsive trade facilitation 🔗

The WTO’s Informal Working Group on Trade and Gender, comprising over 120 members, is actively working to integrate gender into trade policy frameworks. Its work programme covers gender-responsive trade policy, applying a gender lens to WTO agreements, improving data collection disaggregated by sex, and designing Aid for Trade that reaches women entrepreneurs. Export promotion agencies in particular need to implement simplified procedures for women-led enterprises and provide targeted training on international quality standards, export documentation, and market linkage support – recognising that procedural complexity disproportionately excludes women with fewer resources and less institutional support.

Agricultural extension and digital access 🔗

Research on gender and agricultural value chains in Asia and Africa shows that training and extension services are generally positively associated with women’s empowerment – but only when they are designed to account for women’s time constraints and social contexts. Gender-sensitive extension means training female extension agents, scheduling services at times women can access, and using communication channels – including SMS and mobile platforms – that women can realistically use. Digital inclusion is not automatic; it requires deliberate design.

The broader case: why gender equality improves trade outcomes 🔗

IMF analysis cited in trade policy research estimates that increasing women’s labour market participation to the same level as men’s could raise some countries’ GDP by up to 34 percent, while closing the gender gap overall could increase GDP by an average of 35 percent. In agriculture specifically, FAO’s projections show that if women farmers had equal access to productive resources, they could increase farm yields by 20 to 30 percent and raise total national agricultural output by 2.5 to 4 percent. These are not marginal gains – they represent the difference between a country being a competitive agricultural exporter or remaining dependent on food imports.

The Sustainable Agriculture Network frames gender equity not as a social add-on but as a structural requirement for productive, resilient, and fair food systems. When women have greater control over agricultural resources and income, households invest more in nutrition, education, and health – generating broader development gains that reinforce a country’s agricultural capacity over time. These benefits also extend to future generations, helping to break intergenerational cycles of poverty and food insecurity.

Gender inequality in agricultural trade is not an inevitable feature of developing economies – it is a policy failure, one that carries a measurable economic cost. The evidence is consistent: removing structural barriers for women farmers improves productivity, strengthens trade competitiveness, and promotes more durable economic growth. The question is no longer whether gender equality matters for agricultural trade. It is whether the political will and institutional frameworks exist to make the necessary changes at the scale and speed required.

What do you think? Should international trade agreements include binding gender provisions as a condition for market access – or would voluntary commitments from governments be more effective in practice? And given that women perform the majority of agricultural labour in many developing countries, why do you think their access to land, credit, and markets has remained so limited despite decades of development interventions?

References

1. https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/04/1135597
2. https://www.fao.org/4/a0493e/a0493e04.htm
3. https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/Library/Publications/2019/UN-Women-Policy-brief-11-The-gender-gap-in-agricultural-productivity-in-sub-Saharan-Africa-en.pdf
4. https://voxdev.org/topic/agriculture/gender-disparities-reduce-agricultural-productivity-developing-countries
5. https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/publications_e/women_trade_pub2807_e.htm
6. https://www.landesa.org/closing-the-crop-gap-transformative-change-through-womens-land-rights/
7. https://www.orfonline.org/research/invisible-hands-women-s-critical-role-in-agricultural-value-chains
8. https://www.landesa.org/securing-womens-land-rights-challenges-and-solutions/
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_roles_in_agriculture
10. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5726380/
11. https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/womenandtrade_e/a4t_women_e.htm
12. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/trade-policy-and-gender-equality/genderresponsive-wto/7C268C5B4D4A4E68ABBAB5A3899D5B6A
13. https://reliefweb.int/report/world/gender-inequalities-and-food-insecurity-ten-years-after-food-price-crisis-why-are-women
14. https://eca.unwomen.org/en/stories/take-five/2024/12/take-five-rural-women-must-be-viewed-as-key-agents-of-change-and-leaders-in-agriculture
15. https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news22_e/women_22sep22_e.htm
16. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8557149/
17. https://t20ind.org/research/achieving-gender-equality-in-access-to-land-and-assets/
18. https://www.sustainableagriculture.eco/post/gender-equity-in-agriculture-essential-for-food-security-resilience-and-justice