The gender dynamics of conditional cash transfers and smallholder farming in Calakmul, Mexico

We explore how Oportunidades, Mexico's anti-poverty conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, impacts production and gender dynamics in the smallholder agricultural sector. A 2010 household survey in one southeastern municipality (Calakmul) captured data on Oportunidades receipt, land use and yields, as well as gendered patterns of asset control, decision-making, labor, and income receipt. Our analysis suggests that households with Oportunidades are more likely to engage in semi-subsistence maize cultivation and on average harvest more maize. Thus Oportunidades appears to support semi-subsistence production. We also document persistent gender gaps in land control, decision-making, labor, and income receipt. Nonetheless, we find that households with Oportunidades have on average smaller gaps of particular kinds: women receiving Oportunidades are more likely to hold de jure land rights and to share in income receipt from four main crops. These effects of Oportunidades on gendered smallholder production dynamics are important ones in smallholder women's lives.