1. Bargaining Power and Biofortification: The Role
of Gender in Adoption of Orange-Fleshed Sweet
Potato in Uganda
Daniel O. Gilligan, Neha Kumar,
Scott McNiven, J.V. Meenakshi, Agnes Quisumbing
GAAP Workshop, Addis Ababa, January 2012

2. GAAP Partner Organizations

3. Gender and Biofortification
HarvestPlus is promoting biofortification as a strategy to reduce
malnutrition (e.g., vitamin A deficiency (VAD); iron deficiency)
– strategy: breed staples crops to be a rich source of missing
micronutrients like iron, vitamin A, and zinc
– potential: sustainable in rural areas, self-targeting toward the poor,
cost-effective over time
Success of biofortification depends on widespread adoption and
consumption of new crop varieties. Gender may be important:
– women provide much of the on-farm labor in Africa and elsewhere
and are primarily responsible for child diets
– there is often a complex dynamic of intrahousehold gender relations
for crop choice (von Braun, Puetz and Webb, 1989)
• New research addresses constraints to crop technology adoption, but
with limited attention to gender (Conley and Udry, 2010; Suri, 2011)

4. An Evaluation of Biofortification in Uganda
• HarvestPlus Orange-Fleshed Sweet Potato (OSP) Project
• disseminate provitamin-A-rich OSP as a strategy to increase
vitamin A intakes and reduce vitamin A deficiency
• OSP vines given to 10,000 households in Uganda in 2007,
followed by agriculture, nutrition and marketing trainings, using
more intensive (Model 1) and less intensive (Model 2) strategies
• The IFPRI/HarvestPlus/CIP
evaluation
• randomized, controlled trial
• baseline & endline surveys, 2007-
2009, qual study 2011
• n=1,472 households
• outcomes: OSP adoption, dietary
intakes of vitamin A, serum
retinol

5. Key Findings of OSP Evaluation:
1. Impact on OSP Adoption in 2009
Model 1 Impact: Model -
Control
Model 2
M1: 64 % ***
M2: 57 % ***
Control Cultivated OSP
0 20 40 60 80
%
• Project resulted in a 57-64 % point increase in OSP
adoption
• Project increased the share of OSP in total sweet potato (SP)
area by 41 to 46 % points

6. 2. Prevalence of Inadequate Vitamin A Intakes, Uganda
100
M1-C: -34%** M1-C: -1% M1-C: -36%**
90
M2-C: -31%** M2-C: -5% M2-C: -26%**
80
70
60
% 50
40
30
20
10
0
Model 1 Model 2 Control Model 1 Model 2 Control Model 1 Model 2 Control
Young children Reference children Women
Baseline Follow up
•Prevalence of inadequate vitamin A intakes (Hotz et al., 2012)
•Fell 33% for young children (age 6-35 months)
•Fell 26-36% for adult women
•Impact on reference children age 3-5 years shows no effect due
to improvement in control group

7. 3. Impact on Vitamin A Status
• Estimated impact on prevalence of low serum retinol
(retinol<1.05μmol/L) in blood samples for children age 3-5 at
baseline or for adult women (Hotz et al., 2012)
• For children with low serum retinol at baseline
• significant reduction in prevalence of low serum retinol at
endline by 9.5 percentage points
• vitamin A intake from OSP was positively associated with
vitamin A status (p<0.05)
• Women: project had no impact on low serum retinol
• Summary: broad adoption of OSP substantially increases vitamin
A intakes and can reduce prevalence of low serum retinol in
children

8. What is the role of gender in OFSP adoption?
1. What roles do women and men play in the
intrahousehold decision-making process to adopt OSP?
• Using data on which household members control each land
parcel, we explore gender-based differences in where OSP is
planted
2. Is OSP adoption more common in households in which
women have stronger bargaining power ?
• Effect could be driven by women’s role in managing child diets
• Women were exclusively targeted for nutrition trainings, so may
have better information about the returns to adopting OSP
• We address question 2 first in a household-level model of OSP
adoption

9. Female bargaining power: asset ownership
Table 1: Gender differentiation in asset ownership at baseline, 2007
Female Male Joint
exclusive exclusive ownership
ownership ownership
Share of value of land 0.161 0.591 0.248
owned, 2007
Share of value of nonland 0.219 0.488 0.308
assets owned, 2007
By District
Land, 2007
Kamuli 0.204 0.457 0.349
Bukedea 0.108 0.739 0.154
Mukono 0.182 0.550 0.268
Nonland assets, 2007
Kamuli 0.215 0.402 0.400
Bukedea 0.164 0.623 0.227
Mukono 0.281 0.420 0.317
• Women have exclusive ownership to 16.1% of land, 21.9% of other assets
• Joint ownership of assets is limited to 25-30% overall

10. Role of bargaining power in household adoption of OSP
Table 2: Household-level model of OSP adoption, controlling for
women’s asset ownership at baseline
All project Female headed Male headed
Dep. Var.: Pr(Adopt OFSP) households households households
Share of land exclusively 0.038 0.365* -0.011
owned by women, 2007 (0.070) (0.217) (0.076)
Share of nonland assets exclusively -0.029 -0.540** 0.032
owned by women, 2007 (0.069) (0.232) (0.074)
Notes: Seasonal random effects model including large set of household control variables.
* significant at the 10% level; **significant at the 5% level.
• Generally, the share of assets exclusively owned by women or by
men does not affect the household decision to grow OSP in a given
season
• In female-headed households, the share of exclusively owned...
• ...land assets: weakly increases OSP adoption
• ...nonland assets: decreases OSP adoption

11. Intrahousehold crop choice decisions
"Who decided what to grow on this parcel?"
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
Females only
0.5
Males only
0.4
0.3 Joint, females first
0.2 Joint, males first
0.1
0
Full sample Kamuli Bukedea Mukono
• Women alone make the crop choice decisions for 20% of land parcels
• 75% of crop choice decisions are joint, but men may receive priority in
as much as 80% of those decisions
“Separate plots are not always good for the well being and unity of the
family. A family can only progress if there’s cooperation between husband
and wife.” --male FGD participant in Kamuli

12. Gender control of land parcels and OSP
Table 4: Gender of parcel control and OSP adoption
Dep Var: Grow OSP on this Unconditional All Parcels If household
• Naïve models (1) parcel (1) (2) adopts OSP
and (2), ignore Parcel control: female only 0.055 0.005 -0.025
links in adoption (0.021)*** (0.005) (0.030)
decisions across Parcel control: male only -0.080 -0.132 -0.211
(0.055) (-0.132)** (0.053)***
parcels Parcel control: joint, female 1st 0.112 0.063 0.032
(0.025)*** (0.063)*** (0.027)
• Plots jointly Ln expenditure per adult equ. 0.020 0.020
controlled, with (0.020)* (0.015)
women leading Vitamin A knowledge, 2007 0.046 0.016
decision- (0.046)*** (0.020)
Change in vit A knowledge 0.041 0.024
making, are (0.041)*** (0.014)*
most likely to Share of SP in land area, 2007 0.226 0.085
have OSP (0.226)*** (0.052)
Land area controlled, 2009 -0.062 -0.066
• Conditional on (-0.062)*** (0.011)***
HH Land parcel area, 2009 0.135 0.151
(0.135)*** (0.021)***
adoption, male Ln farmer group size -0.114 -0.014
controlled plots (-0.114)* (0.063)
are least likely to Land tenure is freehold -0.169 -0.305
have OSP (-0.169)* (0.340)
Observations 5723 5032 3138

13. Correlated decisions across parcels
Table 5: OSP adoption, correlated decisions across parcels
• Controlling for
Incl. Other Household
correlation of Parcel Fixed
decisions across Dep Var: Grow OSP on this Controls Effects
parcels weakens parcel (1) (2)
significance of Parcel control: female only -0.077 -0.124
effects (0.052) (0.247)
Parcel control: male only -0.292 -0.656
• Acknowledge that (0.098)*** (0.345)*
gender of control Parcel control: joint, female 1st 0.091 0.232
over parcels is not (0.046)** (0.191)
fixed; still need to No. other parcels: female only -0.088
account for this (0.022)***
No. other parcels: male only -0.035
• Cannot yet (0.024)
identify whether No. other parcels: joint, female 1st -0.133
effects are gender (0.016)***
differences in No. other parcels: joint, male 1st -0.116
preferences, (0.012)***
information or Observations 5032 4490
specialization Notes: Other control variables not reported.

14. Women’s assets, parcel control and OSP adoption
Table 7: OSP adoption by female ownership of nonland assets
• Households in High share of
which women have Low share of female
lower asset female ownership of
ownership are ownership of nonland
more likely to grow Dep Var: Grow OFSP on this nonland assets assets
OSP on joint plots parcel (1) (2)
with women in Parcel control: female only 0.032 -0.036
primary control (0.049) (0.035)
Parcel control: male only -0.085 -0.198
(0.065) (0.082)**
• Where female Parcel control: joint, female 1st 0.097 0.021
share of assets is (0.029)*** (0.032)
higher, decision- Observations 2377 2655
making on joint Notes: Other control variables not reported.
plots appears more
egalitarian, but
OSP adoption is
lower on male-
controlled plots

15. Closing Points
• Need to understand how
men’s and women’s control
of land and assets affect
adoption of new
technologies
• This is especially important
for agricultural
technologies that have the
potential for improving
nutrition
• For learning purposes,
experiment with providing
access to nutrition trainings
between women and men,
or between women and
both together