Women Participation in Agriculture in Developing Countries: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Despite the crucial role women play in agriculture in developing countries, they are faced with several constraints which reduce their productivity. The aim of this systematic review was to analyze women's participation in the agriculture sector in the developing world to direct policy interventions in this area. Literature search was conducted from six databases: Google scholar, EBSCO host (Econlit and Gender studies), Psychinfo, Scopus, Jstor, and Web of Science (agricultural, multidisciplinary and women studies components) covering the period from January 2009 to July 2019. This literature search employed the keywords: "Participation" or "role", "women" or "females" or "gender" or "girls", "farm" or "agriculture" or "estate" or "garden", "factors". The review was executed in three steps:1) identification of studies, 2) content extraction and critical appraisal, and 3) synthesis of extracted content. The quality of articles was evaluated using scoring matrics of Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool criteria. From a search finding of 1,705,928 articles, only 21 papers met the inclusion criteria. The review has demonstrated that most of the agriculture activities are done by women however they continue to face limited decision making.