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Abstract
The efficiency of women fanners 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 test 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 Cote d 'Jvoire
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 fanners in African agriculture.