In the 1990s, during liberalization, the phenomenon became more pronounced and negative effects appeared in the rural female population.
In 2009 World Bank, FAO & IFAD found that over 80 per cent of rural smallholder farmers worldwide were women, this was caused by men migrating to find work in other sectors.
Women have been increasingly counted as heads of household,[1] running their own farms without male assistance.
Their plot sizes are usually smaller and have less access to other productive resources, like education, tools, and seeds,[6] something termed “investment poverty”.
After structural adjustments, export farmers became more vulnerable to price shocks, and women within this category more so.
Typically, reliance on the plow has been associated with male-dominated farming, which leads to crop inefficiencies if they leave.
With male migration, the amount of labor dedicated to farming fell, as women retained child care responsibilities.
These same structural adjustments removed support for the industries that held many jobs in the city, which further depressed incomes.
Included in these policies was the disassembly of state entities, social support mechanisms, and various subsidies.
The reduction of tariffs led to instability of farm income, due to market swings.
Farmers have begun to grow more conservative crops and rely on wage labor, rather than farm income.
When social subsidies on education and health were removed, women became responsible for supplementing the increased cost.
In both Africa and Latin America male migration has been associated with feminization of the rural agricultural economy.
Before liberalization there existed public credit facilities, as well as input assistance (fertilizer and seeds etc.
A third possibility is that neither have changed and that recent data have only begun to capture the women already working in agriculture.
They stress increasing access to many necessary inputs to productive agriculture, including credit, education and training, and land.
With women as a large portion of agriculture workers, they are often denied power to make decisions about resources and access they have to land.
The World Bank argued that development policy should increase access to the agricultural resources that men have (e.g. land, credit facilities, health care).