This study investigates the gender gap in agricultural productivity in Malawi and Nigeria, utilizing the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition methodology on nationally representative household panel datasets. While female farmers comprise a considerable proportion of the agricultural labor force in Sub-Saharan African countries, their productivity is consistently facing deficiencies compared to their male counterparts. This inequality emerges from two major sources: input disparity and structural barriers. In Malawi, results show that structural effect accounted for over 95% of the gender gap, mostly due to the matrilineal inheritance system that formally guarantees women access to land and productive inputs. On the other hand, in Nigeria, the gender gap was primarily explained by endowment differences, including plot sizes and access to capital and machinery, reflecting the patriarchal inheritance custom and biased intra-household resource distribution. These contradictory findings emphasize the necessity for implementing context-specific policy interventions: structural reforms to increase female accessibility to financial assistance and education in Malawi, and targeted resource redistribution including land and mechanization for Nigeria. Overall, this paper provides academic contributions by presenting a comparative analysis of two countries in comparable regions but with distinct cultural contexts and deriving localized policy implications.
