Collective Action, Women Empowerment And Household Food Security Among Smallholder Farmers in Murang’a County, Kenya

Abstract

Food insecurity and malnutrition is a major developmental challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the region, women empowerment holds a potential to achieving household food security (HFS). Despite this, women face gender-specific constraints in their access to productive resources, inequitable decision making and time constraints which limit their potential in achieving household food security. Collective action has been promoted as a pathway to empowering women for improved HFS. However, the empirical basis exploring the effect of context-specificity collective action on women empowerment and HFS is barely established. Employing data collected from 532 proportionately and randomly sampled households, ten focus group discussions, and two key informant interviews, this study assessed the effect of collective action and women empowerment on HFS among smallholders in Murang’a County, Kenya. Based on a multiple correspondence analysis and cluster analysis, the study characterised the typologies of collective action. Secondly, multivariate probit model (MVP) and exogenous switching treatment effects models were applied to assess the determinants of gendered participation patterns in different typologies of collective action. Thirdly, based on METE and MVP, the study evaluated the effect of collective action on women empowerment. Lastly, a multinomial logit model and endogenous switching regression model were employed to evaluate the effect of women empowerment on HFS through the moderating effects of collective action. The results revealed two typologies of collective action namely, efficiency and livelihood that were highly distinct in their level of formalization, membership composition, nature and scope of coordination, level of social capital, level of social networking and internal governance mechanisms. Findings on participation revealed gender gaps across livelihood and efficiency typologies. The gender gaps can be explained by the differences in organizational characteristics and unobservable and observable characteristics between men and women regarding farm size, livestock, off-farm income, bank account, education and farming experience. The women’s empowerment outcomes were differentially influenced by the differences in organizational and household characteristics The efficiency typology improved women’s empowerment in income control, public speaking and membership in groups. Livelihood typology improved women’s decision-making and autonomy in production, asset, income and credit control, workload and leisure. However, both typologies failed to influence women’s ownership of assets. On the HFS effects, on the efficiency typology, except production, the negative effects were observed on income control, asset ownership, workload and public speaking. The findings further revealed that among the livelihood typology, production and public speaking, income control and workload positively influenced HFS and asset ownership negatively influenced HFS. In accounting for the HFS effects along the production and income pathways, the results revealed HFS effects were higher among livelihood typology than efficiency typology. Contrary to the livelihood typology that revealed a positive effect of income on HFS, the efficiency typology showed a negative effect on HFS through income. The overall HFS across the combined pathways of income and production was lower for the efficiency typology than the livelihood typology. Findings the study contributes to the study of new institution economics and concludes that one size fits all promotional policy approaches are inadequate. The study suggests multiple policy interventions that would confer complementarities, synergies and spill over effects in developing the collective action typologies while addressing the goals of food security, gender equality and women empowerment and poverty reduction concurrently.