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Abstract
It has often been hypothesized that new agricultural technologies could have an adverse impact on women because additional
labor required of them reduces the time spent and therefore income earned from private-field activities. This study shows that
the expansion of cotton cultivation on the household communal fields in southern Mali associated with the introduction of new
technologies results in increased payments to women for their increased labor on the cotton fields. Unfortunately, these
payments are small compared to the loss of revenue from private-plot production. Thus, the net effect of the expansion of
household cotton cultivation is a reduction in incomes of women who cultivate private plots. Short-run policy implications of
this study are that improving women's income requires concern with their private-plot earnings. For example, profitability of
the private-field crops could be increased with higher input use. In the long run, as land becomes even more constrained,
emphasis needs to be placed on institutional changes to increase women's bargaining power so that they obtain larger shares of
the new income streams resulting from technological change on the communal field. Institutional changes already occurring in
the region, with the apparent objective of increasing women's (and non-household head men's) bargaining power, include
organized work teams and the movement toward smaller, nuclear families.© 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.