Browsing by Subject "Gender gap"

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A multifaceted analysis of Myanmar’s rice sector: gender perspectives, international competitiveness, and farmers’ emotional well-being
(2025) Chan, Nandar Aye; Zeller, Manfred
The agricultural sector is vital to Myanmar’s economic development, food security, and poverty reduction. However, recent global shifts in commodity markets, combined with local crises such as climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, conflicts, economic instability, and rising fertilizer prices and operational costs, have significantly affected Myanmar’s agri-food sector. These challenges threaten the performance of the agricultural sector, particularly the rice sector, which is essential for many livelihoods, rural employment, and export earnings. The sector faces declining productivity, reduced incomes, rising debt burdens, and increased vulnerability, especially among smallholder farmers, including women. Therefore, the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Irrigation (MOALI) is dedicated to strengthening the rice sector through promoting inclusive gender roles, enhancing competitiveness in the domestic and international rice markets, and safeguarding the socio-economic well-being of all farmers. Addressing Myanmar’s key agricultural challenges and aligning with the objectives of MOALI, this dissertation investigates three critical areas (Chapters 2 to 4) to make a modest knowledge contribution to the sustainability and long-term development of the country’s rice sector. Despite government initiatives and extensive research on Myanmar’s rice sector, three important aspects remain underexplored: the gender gap in productivity, cost competitiveness, and the role of productivity in mediating shocks to farmers’ well-being. Specifically, this dissertation has three main objectives: 1) to estimate the magnitude of the gender gap in rice productivity and identify the factors contributing to this gap; 2) to analyze the cost competitiveness of rice production by examining production costs, cost efficiency, and the potential effect of improving cost efficiency on the country’s global competitiveness; and 3) to examine the effects of shocks on farmers’ well-being and explore how rice productivity mediates this relationship. Understanding these issues is crucial for designing policies that improve the performance of Myanmar’s rice sector and strengthen farmers’ resilience. The dissertation employs a quantitative approach, using household survey data and other secondary data sources. Particularly, data for Chapters 2 and 3 originate from the 2014 Area-Based Farm Household Survey in the Ayeyarwady Delta Region, administered by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) under the Metrics and Indicators for Tracking in the Global Rice Science Partnership project. Chapter 3 also incorporates nationwide phone survey datasets, including the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (MHWS) and the Myanmar Agricultural Performance Survey (MAPS), conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) during 2021-2022. This cumulative dissertation consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 presents the introduction. Chapter 2 examines the gender gap. Chapter 3 focuses on the cost competitiveness of Myanmar’s rice sector. Then, Chapter 4 investigates the mediating role of rice productivity in the shocks-happiness relationship, and Chapter 5 concludes the dissertation and provides policy recommendations. Chapter 2 presents an analysis of the gender productivity gap in Myanmar’s rice sector. The analysis focuses on the Ayeyarwady Delta region, one of the three major agroecological zones for rice cultivation in Myanmar, using IRRI regional plot-level data. The study addresses seasonal variation and assesses jointly managed plots. The Oaxaca-Blinder mean decomposition approach is used to identify the causes of gender differences in monsoon and summer paddy productivity. The empirical findings show that women managers are 7 percent less productive than men in monsoon paddy production, with 95 percent of this gap explained by structural effects. Plots jointly managed by women and men outperform those managed by either women or men alone in summer paddy production. The results show that seasonality affects the disparity in gender productivity. Divorced women account for a large portion of the productivity differential among non-married women managers. Initiatives to eliminate the gender yield gap in Myanmar should pay attention to the unique requirements and obstacles that women encounter throughout different seasons and tailor their interventions accordingly. Chapter 3 conducts a comparative analysis of production costs among major rice-producing countries and estimates the cost efficiency of rice farming in Myanmar using a stochastic frontier cost function model. Moreover, this study examines the link between cost efficiency and domestic resource costs (DRC), a key indicator of global competitiveness in rice production. The study also considers the seasonal variations in Myanmar during both the dry and wet seasons. The findings show that Myanmar ranks as the second least expensive rice-producing country among selected Asian countries. The mean cost efficiencies are 89% and 86% for the dry and wet seasons, respectively. Both dry and wet seasons of rice production demonstrate a comparative advantage. The results also show that cost efficiency positively contributes to global competitiveness in both seasons. Focusing on education, farm size, seed procurement strategies, and training programs can increase cost efficiency, thereby further improving global competitiveness in rice production. Chapter 4 examines the effects of shocks on farmers’ happiness in Myanmar and explores the mediation role of rice productivity in this relationship. The study uses nationwide phone survey datasets from Myanmar, provided by the IFPRI, specifically focusing on the rice sector to assess productivity. The study applies the mediation analysis outlined by Acharya et al. (2016) and estimates the average controlled direct effect (ACDE) of shocks while accounting for rice productivity as a mediator. To ensure robustness, additional causal mediation analysis is employed. The results indicate that rice productivity partially mediates the shock-happiness relationship. This suggests that shocks influence happiness through additional pathways beyond productivity. Moreover, farmers’ happiness is more directly influenced by recent productivity than by past agricultural performance. However, past shocks continue to have a significant and lingering effect on their happiness. These findings highlight the need for policymakers to mitigate the impact of shocks on well-being not only by improving rice productivity but also by addressing other factors that influence farmers’ happiness. The findings of this dissertation contribute to the literature on the development of Myanmar’s rice sector. Firstly, providing the first empirical evidence of the gender gap in productivity can help inform targeted policy interventions to increase rice productivity while addressing the specific needs of men and women in rice production. Secondly, it provides scalable insights to promote the competitiveness, sustainability, and efficiency of rice production, which not only benefits Myanmar but also contributes to the broader global rice market. Finally, given the importance of understanding the relationship between shocks and well-being through rice productivity, this insight provides valuable guidance for designing interventions to strengthen productivity and improve well-being in vulnerable agrarian communities facing climate-related shocks. All these chapters contribute to the understanding of seasonality, which is vital for highlighting the importance of seasonal production dynamics in Myanmar’s rice sector. Overall, Myanmar’s rice sector can achieve greater sustainability and development by promoting gender equality, enhancing competitiveness, and supporting resilience-building measures for rice-farming communities, ultimately improving farmers’ well-being.
Occupational licensing and the gender wage gap
(2020) Rostam-Afschar, Davud; Pagliero, Mario; Koumenta, Maria
We use a unique survey of the EU labor force to investigate the relationship between occupational licensing and the gender wage gap. We find that the gender wage gap is canceled for licensed self-employed workers. However, this closure of the gender wage gap is not mirrored by significant changes in the gender gap inhours worked. Our results are robust using decomposition methods, quantile regressions, different datasets, and selection correction.
Perceived wages and the gender gap in STEM fields
(2018) Pfeifer, Gregor; Osikominu, Aderonke
We estimate gender differences in elicited wage expectations among German Uni- versity students applying for STEM and non-STEM fields. Descriptively, women expect to earn less than men and also have lower expectations about wages of average graduates across different fields. Using a two-step estimation procedure accounting for self-selection, we find that the gender gap in own expected wages can be explained to the extent of 54-69% by wage expectations for average graduates across different fields. However, gender differences in the wage expectations for average graduates across different fields do not contribute to explaining the gender gap in the choice of STEM majors.