Gender Analysis on Decision-Making Roles among Maize Farming Households in Agricultural Zone C of Kogi State, Nigeria
Abstract
This study analysed the decision-making role among maize farming households in Agricultural Zone of Kogi state, Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 160 households from which the male and female heads were interviewed. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics and decision-making index. The mean age of male respondents was about 40 years while that of female respondents was about 33 years. Average income of male farmers was N147,321.90 while that of female farmers was N143,475.0. The average household size of the respondents was approximately 8 persons. The mean years of experience of male respondents was 16 years while that of the females was 10 years. It was observed that majority (95.9%) of the households depended on inherited land. Male respondents were more dominant in tertiary education than female respondents. The average DMI overall activities was 0.5 meaning that women on the overall were dominated by their men counterparts in terms of decision-making. It was recommended that the female gender must be more involved in households’ decision-making as their insights and perspectives can lead to higher productivity. Most constraints identified bothers around institutional and infrastructural inadequacies in Nigeria’srurality therefore better extension service provision should be provided to the rural farmers, higher access to credits and provision of more access roads in rural areas.
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Introduction
In Africa, 80% of the agricultural production comes from small-scale farmers, who are mostly rural women. Women comprise the largest percentage of the workforce in the agricultural sector (World Food Organization, 2013). Hence the bridging of the actual and potential productivity gap will promote agricultural productivity and enhance the overall economic development in developing countries like Nigeria. Farmers make decisions on a number of pre-harvest and post-harvest activities such as what to produce, input to use, harvest and post-harvest issues, which according to William (2003) affect production, processing, distribution, prices and costs. Farming decisions are made to maximize farm objectives subject to available materials and human resources. Despite the significant role played by women in agricultural production, processing and marketing in Nigeria (Barasa, 2006) men have continued to dominate farm decision-making, even in areas where women are the largest providers of farm labour (Amaechina, 2002).
Women are more or less relegated to playing second fiddle in farm decision-making. This could be counterproductive because there is bound to be conflict when women as key players, carryout farm tasks without being part of the decision process especially when the decisions fail to recognize their other peculiar household roles and responsibilities (Umeh, 2014). Maize (Zea mays) is also known as corn, and belongs to the family of Gramineae, which has many characteristics common to other grasses. It is a cereal crop that produces grain that can be used as food for human being as well as animals. Maize is high yielding, easy to produce, readily digested and cheaper than other cereals. It is also a versatile crop (Muhammed et al., 2013). Despite the important roles women play in farm and household production, they have not been given due recognition in the agricultural sector (Ingawa, 1999). There has been a great disparity between women and men. Women have been facing various socioeconomic obstacles such as difficulty in gaining access to land, credit facilities, productivity, enhancing inputs and other services which affect their productivity in agricultural sector compared to men who have more access to productive resources (Rahman, 2009). Inmost cases women are marginalized in the areas of decision-making as well as access to extension and these have implications to the poverty statuses of women in agrarian economies. According to United Nation Gender-related Development Index (GDI), women are underprivileged and less empowered and this undeniably restricts women’sability to achieve full potentials in developing countries (United Nation Development Programme, 2006). This study therefore seeks to close the gap of the dearth of information available as to the accurate labour contribution as well as farm decision making roles of women especially in Kogi State. Therefore, the purpose of this study is gender analysis of decision-making roles among maize farming households in Agricultural zone area of Kogi State, Nigeria. The specific objectives of the study are to: i) Describe the socio-economic characteristics of male and female members of the maize farming households in the study area; ii) Estimate the level of involvement in farm decision-making by gender among farming households; iii) Identify the constraints to maize farming in the study area.
Conclusion
Based on the findings of this research, it can be concluded that the female gender in the maize farming households was significantly dominated by the male gender in terms of decision-making. The observed indicators in decision-making index show that the men dominated the women in decision-making. This shows that farming enterprise was a male-dominated sector as such the male solely made decisions as regards productive resources and other farm activities that they are dominant in. The study revealed that the extension contact was very low in the area, as most of the respondent had never received an extension agent on their farms. This implies that extension contact which is supposed to be one of the main sources of agricultural information/ technologies for improved methods of agricultural activities was insufficient in the study area. The female gender must be more involved in households’ decision-making as their insights and perspectives can lead to higher productivity. Most constraints identified bother around institutional and infrastructural inadequacies in Nigeria’srurality therefore better extension service provision should be provided to the rural farmers, higher access to credits and provision of more access roads in rural areas.