Women in Agriculture

Migration is transforming rural
economies, landscapes, and potentially, gender relations.
Migration is one of the drivers of the so-called
feminization of agriculture in Latin America. This
feminization has relevance for everyone given agriculture’s
role in regional food security, national shared prosperity,
and household resilience to shocks. The objective of this
study is to investigate the feminization of agriculture as
well as its implications for women’s agency, household
welfare, and agricultural productivity. This report provides
some introduction to women in agriculture, lays out the
study methodology, and provides background information on
migration, women, and agriculture in Guatemala. Women’s role
in agriculture is even more crucial in Guatemala, which
suffers from the double burden of chronic malnutrition and
obesity. This analysis seeks to investigate the impact of
male migration on agriculture, but also its implications for
women’s agency and agricultural productivity, as mediated by
factors such as land tenure and access to agricultural
extension services. This analysis seeks to better understand
how male out-migration is influencing women’s agency in
agriculture; to understand if, when women are in control of
their farms, it changes the types of decisions they make and
thus the results that they obtain; and finally, to get a
better sense of how these differences in agency (if any)
lead to better or worse livelihood outcomes for the farm
household. This study is based on a quantitative field
survey conducted in August 2014, as well as qualitative
focus groups and interviews conducted in May 2014 to test
the questionnaire.