Using a matching decomposition to examine the gender technology gap in Tanzanian agriculture

The promotion of gender equality in access to productive resources relies on multiple valid arguments. However, whether equal resource endowment would result in equal agricultural productivity is controversial. Using panel data from Tanzania, we examine the agricultural technology levels of male and female managed plots, and find that female farmers operate on a significantly lower technology level than their male counterparts. Thus, even if female farmers used the same amount of agricultural inputs and were equally efficient as male farmers, they would probably still attain lower yields. We employ a matching and decomposition approach to analyse whether the difference in technology between male and female managed plots originates from observations outside the common support or different distributions of productive resources, household characteristics, or crop choice within the common support. We find that most plots under female and male management are well comparable and fall into the common support, but different distributions of considered characteristics cannot sufficiently explain the observed differences in levels of technology among female and male farmers. Only among the few farmers that apply inorganic fertilizer, female and male farmers work on a similar technology level.