Blumberg (1989) reported that the Kenyan women farmers obtained higher crop
yields than their male counterpart. However, rural women’s production was
constrained by time required for routine domestic tasks and inadequate access to
extension, credit and inputs. Blumberg (1989) noted that women were as good as or
better credit risk takers than men. This point was shared by United Nations (1994)
expert group on women and finance. However, Oketch and Dondo (1994) found no
evidence to show that women were better borrowers than men. Blumberg (1989)
concluded that attention to women’s farmers’ skills, incentives and constraints was the
single most cost-effective approach to alleviating the African food crisis. The study
further observed that gender needed to be tracked in MSEs, programmes, and policies
in order to overcome special constraints on women’s productivity, participation, and
access to benefits. The question of credit and type of help the WGs receive was a major
variable in the present study.