Gender and Cross Border Flows of Horticulture Exports: The Hidden Hand of Women in Economic Growth at Macro Level

Abstract

The economic empowerment of women in agriculture sector has become a central goal of the international community including the Governments of many developing countries. This is because studies have found the rural women consist of the majority of the world poor and vulnerable. However, the appropriate strategy for achieving growth in any given country remains an open question. Studies that have examined the linkage between export horticulture and poverty reduction have established that women are champions of social economic growth and posses the potential for sustainable development despite constraints occasioned by social cultural factors. This paper reports the results of a household survey in Kenya undertaken to establish determinants of growth driven by women in a sector that accounts from 11% the national Gross Domestic Product in Kenya. Though there are some positive trends that women entrepreneurs actively contribute to the overall growth the gender gap actually appears to be increasing as most women owned enterprises are at survival and stability growth platform a factor that hinders their inclusion in the unit of analysis at macro level which stops at quantitative variables (profit, value of assets, and number of employees) as opposed to qualitative variables (size of networks, unpaid work).