This note presents key lessons on closing gender productivity gaps in agriculture, drawn from impact evaluations across the Gender Innovation Lab Federation. It reports that gender productivity gaps in agriculture are large around the world, with women comprising 40 to 50 per cent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries, and gender differences in agricultural productivity as high as 66 per cent.

It explains that those differences arise from gender-specific constraints such as unequal access to farm labour, agricultural inputs, lower literacy, childcare responsibilities, limited involvement in cash crop production and lower participation in farmers' groups, and that women farmers are concentrated in the lower levels of agricultural value chains and are less likely to be active in commercial farming than men. Restrictive gender norms underlie occupational sex-segregation in agriculture, leading women to concentrate in low-value crops. The note sets out three key findings on what works and what does not to narrow gender productivity gaps and help farmers reach their potential.