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Of Men, Women, and Livestock.
Gender Differences in the Ownership and Management of Livestock
in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Alberto Zezza, World Bank, Development Research Group, [email protected]
ABSTRACT
A vast and growing amount of literature exists that documents gender inequalities in nearly all aspects of
livelihoods management, from access to education to asset acquisition, wage differentials, and beyond. The livestock
sector is no exception, in that women are disadvantaged relative to men in terms of herd size, managerial roles, scale of
production, and access to industrial value chains (FAO 2011). At the same time, given the role of livestock as an
insurance mechanism, a store of wealth and a potentially sustainable income generating activity (FAO 2009), the
livestock sector can serve as an important source of livelihoods, and a potential pathway out of poverty for rural women
(IFAD 2011).
This growing literature is a sign of how gender issues in agriculture have attracted an unprecedented wave of
attention in recent year. The production of gender disaggregated data on agricultural production, however, has lagged
behind. This lack of progress is particularly notable for Sub-Saharan Africa (a region where according to many the
quality and quantity of agricultural statistics has been steadily declining in the last two decades), and with relation to
livestock issues (which systematically attract less attention than crop statistics, even within the agricultural statistics
community).
The dearth of gender disaggregated data has been acknowledged by and has affected the analysis the FAO’s and
World Bank’s flagship reports on gender in recent years (FAO, 2011; World Bank, 2011). This paper draws on six
recent nationally representative household surveys, to shed new light on the gender differences in the ownership and
management of livestock assets in Sub-Saharan Africa. The six countries jointly represent about 45 percent of the
population and a similar share of the estimated cattle, sheep and goat inventories in Sub-Saharan Africa (FAOSTAT
online).
The surveys (from Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda) are part of the Living Standard
Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) project, a long term effort to improve the quality
and availability of micro-level living standard and agriculture data in Africa, which is making an explicit effort to
integrate gender in data collection, as well as to improve the livestock modules of national household surveys.
Traditionally the only gender analysis of agricultural issues possible with national multi-topic surveys was drawing on
the comparison of male and female headed households. This new generation of multi-topic surveys includes more detail
on the individual level ownership and management of livestock (alongside other agricultural activities).
Preliminary evidence shows clear gender differences in ownership of livestock, with women much less likely to
own livestock, particularly large stock (e.g. cattle), and on average owning fewer livestock than men. More surprising
results however also emerge from the data, such as the finding that, conditional on owning livestock (or certain types of
livestock) women do not necessarily own fewer livestock, and are as if not more market oriented than male livestock
Paper size: A4, character: Times New Roman, all margins 2 cm
owners. Our exploration of the data also reveals that women managing livestock earn less from their livestock, manage
considerably lower numbers of the main livestock species, with the exception of poultry, and have significantly lower
levels of usage of key inputs such as labor, fodder, and vaccinations.
The paper presents novel, systematic evidence on the patterns of livestock ownership across gender lines, the
differences in herd structure between male and female owners, and reviews the emerging systematic patterns in terms of
access to both input and output markets. The paper also reviews the shortcomings of the available data for more indepth analysis of gender issues, and proposes an agenda for further work on improving this crucial aspect of survey
design, which is also one of the priority areas identified in the Global Strategy Action Plan.