Gender gaps in technology diffusion

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: BenYishay, Ariel; Jones, Maria; Kondylis, Florence; Mobarak, Ahmed Mushfiq
• 署名单位: William & Mary; Yale University; Deakin University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2019.102380
• 发表日期: 2020
• 关键词: gender discrimination; technology adoption; agriculture; social networks

摘要

Even with comparable innate ability and performance, women may be subject to discrimination. We run a field experiment across 143 Malawian villages in which either men or women were assigned the task of learning about a new agricultural technology, and then communicating it to others to convince them to adopt. Objective measures of these communicators' knowledge and adoption of the new technology show no gender gap in their ability to acquire, retain and use the information. Yet, micro-data on individual interactions from 6500 farmers show that other farmers are less willing to learn from female communicators, whom they perceive not to be as good at fanning as their male counterparts. In spite of this, other farmers learn just as much about the technology when the communicator role is reserved for women, and they experience similar faun yields.