A Gender Gap in Agricultural Productivity? Evidence from the Dairy Sector in India

In agriculture, women have been found to be less productive than men for a variety of reasons. Most of the studies in this domain focus on crop production, and so far there has been little evidence on the impact of gender on productivity in dairy. This paper provides empirical evidence of the impact of female decision-making power on dairy productivity in India, based on a unique household-level dataset collected in 2010 in 50 villages in Andhra Pradesh, a state in the South of India. Our analysis suggests that higher productivity is achieved in households where women take dairy production-related decisions. While caution is due in drawing overly strong conclusions, our results provide a more nuanced view on the impact of gender on agricultural productivity than the one usually put forward in the literature.