Relative efficiency of women as farm managers: Profit function analysis in Côte d'Ivoire

Abstract The efficiency of women farmers in the agricultural sector of developing countries is passionately debated. Very few studies have examined this issue in African agriculture. All previous studies were based on production functions, but have been criticised as suffering from simultaneous equation bias because the input levels are endogenous. The profit function method avoids these problems. No previous study has used the profit function method to lest for technical, allocative and economic efficiency differences between women and men farmers. The objective of this paper was to determine whether women rice farmers are less efficient than men rice farmers in Côte d'Ivoire using the restricted normalised profit function method. Our results show that the relative degree of efficiency of women is similar to that of men. The paper provides empirical support for efforts to eliminate bias against women farmers in African agriculture.