The Gendered Burden: How Rigid Gender Roles Limit Women’s Participation in Climate-Smart Agriculture in Baringo South Sub-County, Kenya.

Women play a crucial role in agricultural production in Kenya’s arid and semi-arid regions, including Baringo South Sub-County, yet their participation in Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) remain limited. This limitation is largely driven by rigid and deeply entrenched gender roles that assign women disproportionate roles. Women have the triple roles which include the reproductive roles such as caregiving and domestic chores, the productive roles such are tilling of subsistence farms and the running of small businesses to get money and the community development roles such as organizing for weddings burial ceremonies and other ceremonies to mark rights of passage. In Baringo South, cultural norms often confine women to unpaid household labour and low-value farming activities, reducing the time, mobility, and autonomy required to engage in climate-smart practices such as conservation agriculture, agroforestry, improving livestock management and water harvesting technologies. This research employed a correlation research design whereby a study sample size of 128 women participants was selected using a simple random sampling procedure.15 Key informants, who included one (1) agricultural extension officers, four (4) cooperative leaders, and ten (10) women leaders in groups focusing on agricultural value chains. were also interviewed totaling to 143 respondents. The gendered expectations further limit women’s access to land, climate information, credit and, and farmer training programs, which are often targeted at men as household heads. As climate variability intensifies, the unequal burden placed on women undermines household resilience, food security and sustainable adoption efforts. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, specifically correlation and regression analysis. Qualitative data were analyzed thematically. Gender roles had a coefficient of B = 0.395, which rejects the null hypothesis (Ho₄). Gender roles have a strong and significant influence on the adoption of climate-smart agriculture among women smallholder farmers. Addressing gender-based constraints such as multiple gender roles, limited access to decision-making, mobility restrictions and traditional gender norm is therefore essential for improving women’s climate resilience and ensuring equitable participation in CSA initiatives. For instance, gender roles can be addressed by farm mechanization, income formation of agricultural cooperatives, access to information and the use if champion farmers who act as role models to other farmers This paper examines how rigid gender roles act as a structural barrier to women’s meaningful participation in climate-smart agriculture in Baringo-South Sub-County.

Gendered Burden, Gender roles, Limit, Participation, Climate-Smart Agriculture.

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