Agricultural Value Chains and Gender in the Post-reform Era: A Review

This article systematically reviewed literature on agricultural market reforms, value chains and gender, selected from Global South developing countries to generate evidence on the changes in smallholder agricultural value chains and gender relations, following liberalization reforms. The study specifically aimed to identify and critically analyse previous attempts to categorize agricultural value chains and provide new value chain categorizations and associated gender relations. The research found that only 5% of reviewed publications have attempted to categorize agricultural value chains, with no consideration of gender relations. A new value chain typology is provided as ‘Traditional’, ‘Digitally-led’, ‘Group-led’ and ‘Firm-led’ value chains. The main finding was that unequal gender relations are inherent in all forms of value chains but tend to be experienced differently by value chain actors depending on the type of value chain.