Els Lecoutere

Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research | CGIAR

Climate change risks exacerbating gender inequalities in agrifood systems; hence, the importance of understanding how women’s empowerment and gender equality of climate adaptive capacities relate. Using primary gender-disaggregated intrahousehold data collected in climate hotspots in Zambia, this study shows a positive relationship between women’s...

Climate change poses a greater threat for more exposed and vulnerable countries, communities and social groups. People whose livelihood depends on the agriculture and food sector, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), face significant risk. In contexts with gendered roles in agri-food systems or where structural constraints to gen...

An increasing body of literature suggests that agriculture is ‘feminizing’ in many low- and middle-income countries. Definitions of the feminization of agriculture vary, as do interpretations of what drives the expansion of women’s roles in agriculture over time. Understanding whether, how, and why the feminization of agriculture is occurring requi...

Insights into the role of changing historical-political-cultural contexts and social norms in shaping adolescent girls’ and boys’ futures contributes to an understanding of human development at the intersection of gender and youth in low- and middle-income countries. This study investigates the capabilities and aspirations of adolescent girls and b...

Lasting transformative change in agri-food systems and wider societal benefits require fostering an enabling environment for empowerment and equality by gender and intersecting social differentiation, while concurrently reducing existing inequalities in access to and control over productive resources, services and technology, resilience and leaders...

The COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh, associated public health measures, and people’s reactions were projected to have caused job losses among women, a decline in women’s empowerment and reduced women’s diet diversity. Using a November 2020 telephone survey to re-interview adult female respondents of a November 2019 in-person survey, contrary to exp...

In low- and middle-income countries, poor cooperation between members of smallholder agricultural households may lead to inefficient allocation of productive resources. This study estimates the causal mediating effects of cooperation between spouses on household welfare and public goods provision in Ugandan and Tanzanian monogamous smallholder coff...

To gain a better understanding of intrahousehold bargaining processes, surveys increasingly collect data from co-heads individually, especially on decision-making, asset ownership and labour contributions. However, answers provided by co-heads to the same set of questions often differ substantially. Recent research suggests that while some of this...

Women are at a particular disadvantage by the stress that climate change poses on food systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) as their adaptive capacity is hampered by unequal access to resources and services and constraints to their agency. This paper proposes a methodology to identify climate–agriculture–gender inequality hotspot LMI...

An increasing body of literature suggests that agriculture is “feminizing” in many low and middle-income countries. Definitions of feminisation of agriculture vary, as do interpretations of what drives the expansion of women’s roles in agriculture over time. Understanding whether, how, and why feminisation of agriculture is occurring, and finding w...

With new possibilities offered by information and communications technology (ICT), an abundance of products, services, and projects has emerged with the promise of revitalizing agricultural extension in developing countries. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that not all ICT-enabled extension approaches are equally effective in improving...

This mixed methods study investigates the impact of introducing participatory intrahousehold decision making in Ugandan agricultural households on multiple dimensions of women’s empowerment, including more subjective aspects of sense of agency and achievements by examining how impact aligns with women’s perceptions of the process, meaning and value...

To promote women’s empowerment, numerous programs provide economic services meant to increase women’s access to economic resources in the household. However, women’s access to economic resources does not always translate into improved bargaining power, and effects of economic strengthening interventions may vary across different decision-making dom...

Agricultural advisory services generally rely on interpersonal knowledge transfers by agricultural extension agents who visit farmers to provide information. This approach is not always effective and has proved hard to scale sustainably, particularly in highly dispersed smallholder farming systems. Information and communication technologies (ICTs)...

https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/research-groups/iob/publications/working-papers/wp-2018/wp-201806/ This study investigates the impact of participatory intrahousehold decision-making, introduced through a randomly encouraged intensive coaching package and less intensive awareness raising couple seminars, in agricultural households in Uganda on intraho...

https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/research-groups/iob/publications/working-papers/wp-2018/wp-201807/ Does increased cooperation between spouses in agricultural households lead to more efficient farming? This working paper describes an experiment in Uganda in which were given either couple seminars or randomly encouraged for an intensive coaching packag...

Agricultural households face collective action dilemmas when making decisions about investments in their common household farm and the allocation of resources and benefits derived from it. We relate intrahousehold decisions, as measured in a lab-in-the-field experiment conducted with spouses in agricultural households in western Uganda, with actual...

This article contributes to understanding the potential of agricultural co-operatives to boost women’s empowerment and close gender gaps in sub-Saharan Africa. It provides quasi-experimental evidence of the impact of membership of an agricultural co-operative on women’s capabilities, their power and ability to influence decisions, and intra-househo...

This viewpoint argues that a genuine participatory approach to defining a theory of change and outcome indicators of enhanced women land and property rights is essential to include the standpoint of women and men who are directly involved, and to acknowledge their power to frame the change and solutions they envision. Moreover, outcomes and outcome...

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21662596-new-paper-asks-why-some-tanzanian-farmers-are-more-selfish-others

In rural African societies, socioeconomic differentiation linked to gender and social status exerts an important influence on the distribution of common pool resources. Through a behavioral experiment conducted in 2008 in rural Tanzania, this contribution examines the influence of gender and social status on distribution behavior of users of self-g...

We revisit a methodology to gauge the short-term effect of price changes on smallholder farmer's welfare that is popular amongst policy makers and academia. Realising that farmers face substantial seasonal price volatility over the course of an agricultural year, we pay particular attention to the timing of sales and purchases. In addition we depar...

This report presents insights from collaborative research on the inclusion of smallholder farmers in the oilseed value chain in Uganda. The results challenge some common precepts of value chain development (VCD). The influence of risk in farmers’ decision making, the dominant role of cash, the competition provided by independent traders, and the li...

Cooperatives have the potential to improve rural livelihoods in sub-Sahara Africa and to contribute to women empowerment in a context with persistent gender inequalities. The latter is expected from the combination of economic empowerment and strengthening individual and transformative agency of women. This article contributes to understanding the...

We study repeated water allocation decisions among small scale irrigation users in Tanzania. In a treatment replicating water scarcity conditions, convexities in production make that substantial efficiency gains can be obtained by deviating from equal sharing, leading to an equity–efficiency trade-off. In a repeated game setting, it becomes possibl...

This article studies how users of scarce common water resources deal with equity-efficiency trade-offs. For this purpose, we conduct a field lab experiment in Tanzania that simulates the distribution of irrigation water between upstream and downstream users. We find a strong preference for equal sharing even if this comes with large foregone effici...

Assumptions about individual time preferences are important for explanations of poverty and development. Data from a large-scale elicitation exercise in Tanzania show significantly higher levels of impatience in urban areas than in rural areas. This result remains robust to adding controls for socio-economic differences between rural and urban area...

http://www.microconflict.eu/publications/PB16.pdf

Water governance in Tanzania’s small-scale irrigation schemes has become ever more challenging because of increasing market penetration, declining predictability of water availability and widening institutional pluralism. Despite these trends, resource conflicts at the local level have generally been avoided. Instead, one observes processes in whic...

The short-run effects of the 2007/2008 global food crisis on semisubsistence farmers' well-being in low-income countries depends on whether they are net sellers or net buyers of the affected commodities. Realizing that farmers face volatile prices over the course of an agricultural year, we analyze the timing of sales and purchases of maize. In add...

Does water scarcity induce conflict? And who would engage in a water scarcity conflict? In this paper we look for evidence of the relation between water scarcity and conflictive behavior. With a framed field experiment conducted with smallholder irrigators from semi-arid Tanzania that replicates appropriation from an occasionally scarce common wate...

Poverty indicators are generally identified on the basis of household consumption expenditure data drawn from nationally representative household budget surveys. In this study, we explore the potential role for more qualitative methods in generating poverty indicators and profiles that incorporate local perspectives on poverty. More specifically, o...

The protracted crisis in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo that lasted from 1996 till 2003 aggravated processes of land alienation and reduced market access. Field research conducted in 2005 in three eastern DRC areas shows that these processes made rural households increasingly vulnerable and deepened structural causes of food insecurity. House...

This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection a...

Making use of a repeated distribution game experiment, we investigate how African peasants distribute and enforce water access in irrigation schemes. Two questions are addressed. First, we investigate the influence of scarcity by comparing a treatment with abundant water availability with a treatment where water is insufficient for both players to...

Analysis of rural households' livelihoods in the Democratic Republic of Congo reveals that the protracted conflict and institutional changes created a highly fragile context constraining livelihood strategies and introducing additional uncertainties. Increased land tenure insecurity and altered 'rules of the game' of the market exacerbated structur...

This paper studies how individual social status influences bilateral bargaining in small-scale societies where resources are scarce. It reports the results of a field lab experiment with members of irrigation schemes who participate either as water distributors or receivers. Our results indicate that social status influences bargaining behavior in...

"Making use of a repeated distribution game experiment, we investigate how African peasants distribute and enforce water access in irrigation schemes. Two questions are addressed. First, we investigate the influence of scarcity by comparing a treatment of abundant water availability with a treatment where water is insufficient for both players to r...