1. Bargaining Power and Biofortification: The Role
of Gender in Adoption of Orange-Fleshed Sweet
Potato in Uganda
Julia Behrman, Daniel O. Gilligan, Neha Kumar,
Scott McNiven, J.V. Meenakshi, Agnes Quisumbing
GAAP Outreach Workshop
Washington, DC, May 8, 2014

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)

4. • 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
• In 2007, 10,000 households in Uganda were given OSP vines plus
agriculture, nutrition and marketing trainings in two models:
• Model 1: 2 years of trainings (intensive)
• Model 2: 1 year of trainings (less intensive)
An Evaluation of Biofortification in Uganda
• The IFPRI/HarvestPlus/CIP evaluation
• randomized, controlled trial
• 2007-2009: baseline & endline
surveys
• n=1,472 households
• outcomes: OSP adoption, dietary
intakes of vitamin A, serum retinol
• 2011: qual study; follow-up survey

5. Key Findings of OSP Evaluation
1. OSP adoption: Project increased OSP adoption by 61 percentage
points (ppt). Share of OSP in total SP area increased to 43%.
2. Dietary Intakes of vitamin A (from dietary recall modules)
• dietary intakes of vitamin A increased sharply for two cohorts of
children (3-5 yrs, 6-35 mos) and for adult women
• prevalence of inadequate intakes of vitamin A fell 33 ppt for
young children and 26-36 ppt for women
3. Serum retinol
• significant 9.5 percentage point reduction in prevalence of low
serum retinol (retinol<1.05μmol/L) at endline among children
with low serum retinol at baseline

6. 1. How do gender dimensions of control over land and
intrahousehold decisionmaking affect OSP adoption
and vitamin A intakes?
2. What is the role of gender in the effect of social
networks on OSP diffusion and sustainability of OSP
adoption?
Topics of GAAP Research on
Gender and Biofortification

7. 1. Control over assets and OSP adoption
• 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
Lessons about gender and OSP adoption
Table 2: HH OSP adoption, controlling for women’s baseline asset ownership
Dep. Var.: Pr(Adopt OFSP)
All project
households
Female headed
households
Male headed
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)
Observations 1305 138 1167
Notes: RE model with controls. * significant at the 10% level; **significant at the 5% level.

8. 2. Gender, control over land and crop choice
Household crop choice decisions are complex and are
usually joint decisions by men and women, but with men
taking the lead. OSP adoption is most likely on plots
where decisions are joint, but women play a leading
role.
• Plots exclusively controlled by women are not more likely
to have OSP
• Conditional on household adoption, male controlled plots
are least likely to have OSP
Lessons about gender and OSP adoption

9. Table 6: OSP adoption by female ownership of nonland assets• Where female
share of assets is
higher, decision-
making on joint
plots appears
more
egalitarian, but
OSP adoption is
lower on male-
controlled plots
Dep Var: Grow OSP on this
Low share of
female
ownership of
nonland assets
High share of
female
ownership of
nonland assets
parcel (1) (2)
Parcel control: female only 0.032 -0.036
(0.049) (0.035)
Parcel control: male only -0.085 -0.198
(0.065) (0.082)**
Parcel control: joint, female 1st 0.097 0.021
(0.029)*** (0.032)
Observations 2377 2655
Notes: Other control variables not reported.
3. Women’s assets, control over land and OSP adoption
• Households in which women have lower asset ownership are more
likely to grow OSP on joint plots with women in primary control
Lessons about gender and OSP adoption

10. 4. Role of gender in diffusion of OSP to other households
• Women do not play a unique role in OSP diffusion, but their
participation in nutrition trainings (women only) increased
diffusion
Lessons about gender and OSP adoption
Dep Var:
Shared OSP vines with other households
All Kamuli Bukedea Mukono
Panel A
Household has a female FG member 0.012 0.145** -0.082 0.067
(0.052) (0.066) (0.099) (0.146)
Panel B
Household has a female FG member 0.010 0.092 -0.092 0.062
(0.051) (0.059) (0.091) (0.096)
Attended at least one nutrition training 0.228*** 0.347* 0.165 0.302**
(0.072) (0.180) (0.109) (0.112)
Notes: Models control for land area under the household’s control in 2007 and an indicator for Model 2. Models
of the full sample include district dummy variables. * significant at the 10% level, ** significant at the 5% level,
*** significant at the 1% level.
Table 8: Gender-based differences in diffusion of OSP, 2007-2009

11. 5. Gender, asset control and intakes of vitamin A
• Share of nonland assets exclusively controlled by women is
associated with higher increase in vitamin A intakes
• But treatment effects are not larger for women with more asset
control
Lessons about gender and OSP adoption
Table 9: Gender differences in control over assets vitamin A intakes
Dep Var:
Change in dietary intake of vitamin A, 2007-2009
Change in dietary
intake of vitamin A,
2007-2009 (μg RAE)
Panel A
Average impact of OSP project 445.5***
(146.0)
Share of nonland assets exclusively controlled by women 509.3**
(237.8)
Panel B
Average impact of OSP project 269.0*
(140.1)
Interaction of treatment effect with share of nonland assets 356.2
exclusively controlled by women great than 5 percent (279.1)
Notes: Sample includes children age 3-5 years in each round. * significant at the
10% level, ** significant at the 5% level, *** significant at the 1% level.

12. What have we learned about the role of gender
in social networks and sustainability of OSP adoption
This research is ongoing
• We have found large impacts of social and information networks
on diffusion of OSP to neighboring households
• Preliminary work on the role of gender in this diffusion does not
show large effects, but this is ongoing

13. Implications for Programming
• In the Uganda study
• Women do play an important role in decisions about adopting
OSP and about vitamin A consumption by children, but
intrahousehold dynamics on the adoption decisions are complex
• suggests continuing to target women for nutrition
trainings, but there may be some benefits to bringing men in
as well
• In new diffusion experiments being conducted with
HarvestPlus, we are giving a unique role to opinion leaders in
health, who are almost always women. This may shed new light
on the role of female leaders in promoting adoption
• In other biofortification studies, context really matters