@article{Meemken:261999,
      recid = {261999},
      author = {Meemken, Eva-Marie and Qaim, Matin},
      title = {Can private food standards promote gender equality in the  small farm sector?},
      address = {2017-08-15},
      number = {1979-2017-3818},
      pages = {13},
      year = {2017},
      abstract = {Agricultural commercialization can help to lift  subsistence farmers out of poverty, but can also have  adverse effects on gender equality. We explore whether  private food standards – with their particular elements to  regulate production and trade – could serve as a vehicle to  promote gender equality in the small farm sector. We use  gender-disaggregated data from coffee producers in Uganda  and focus on two sustainability standards that explicitly  address gender issues, namely Fairtrade and UTZ. Entropy  balancing techniques, combined with estimates of farmers’  willingness to accept standards, are used to control for  possible selection bias when comparing certified and  non-certified households. We find that standards and their  certification programs increase wealth in male-headed and  female-headed households. In male-headed households,  standards also change the intra-household distribution of  asset ownership: while in non-certified households, assets  are predominantly owned by the male household head alone,  in certified households most assets are jointly owned by  the male head and his female spouse. Standards also improve  access to agricultural extension for both male and female  farmers. Effects on women’s access to financial services  are statistically insignificant. Private standards cannot  completely eliminate gender disparities, but the findings  suggest that they can contribute towards this goal.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/261999},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.261999},
}