agents in the surveyed regions or special institutional provisions within the extension service, such as gender focal points. The qualitative field research indicates that the perception bias regarding women’s role in agriculture limits the attention given to expanding extension services to women. Although the national policy framework for agricultural extension fully acknowledges the role of women in agriculture (Birner and Anderson 2007), within the agricultural administration the topic often does not receive priority, because of the perception that women are not involved in agricultural decision making. Moreover, there is a lack of female staff among agricultural extension workers, a problem that is related to the policy of not having hired field staff for many years. The lack of strategies to promote gender equity among public administration or service providers in India presents a remarkable contrast with the strategies targeting political representatives. Still, the main reason why women have limited access to agricultural extension services is not the lack of strategies that make the service more responsive to the needs of women. It is rather the overall deterioration of the public sector extension system. The few agricultural extension agents who are still left in the system are required to spend most of their time implementing subsidized input programs that are subject to considerable political interference rather than disseminating or delivering knowledge. This deterioration of the system disproportionally affects women, as they are not considered a target group of the activities in which the few remaining extension agents are engaged. Nonpublic actors have not stepped in (at least not in the surveyed areas at the time of the study). Ghana is the most advanced of the three countries in terms of institutionalizing attention to gender in the public agricultural extension system. At the national level, one of its seven directorates is Women in Agricultural Development (WIAD), and there is one designated senior officer in charge of WIAD in each district agricultural office. Supported by the District Capacity Building Project (DISCAP) project, the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs is establishing gender desks in each district assembly. The field research suggests that the perception bias regarding women’s role in agriculture is less pronounced in Ghana than in the other two countries. Women are widely recognized to be farmers in their own right. Ghana also has the highest percentage of female extension staff in the surveyed areas (15 percent). Although still low in light of the prominent role of women in agriculture, the figure compares favorably with the complete lack of female extension staff in India and the 9 percent figure in Ethiopia. The achievements in institutionalizing attention to gender in the public administration system have not improved female farmers’ access to extension services in Ghana, however; access to agricultural extension by women remains very low. Investigation of the question of why female access to extension services is so low despite the government’s far-reaching efforts to increase access requires further research. The findings in this report indicate that the answer may lie in the general problems faced by the extension service sector. If the system had a
COMPARING THE THREE COUNTRIES
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