ABSTRACT Rural women substantially contribute to agricultural production and development in South Asia, and farmer cooperatives have been promoted to empower them. However, there is limited evidence regarding the effects of cooperative membership on women. In this paper, we evaluate impacts of membership in women-only and mixed-gender cooperatives in South India on women’s intra-household decision-making power, using data of 313 female milk producers. Propensity score matching and a two-step control function approach are employed to account for selection bias due to observed and unobserved factors. We find that membership in either women-only or mixed-gender cooperatives has a positive impact on intra-household decision-making power. In particular, members of mixed-gender cooperatives gain significantly more power over decisions regarding dairy production, compared to members of women-only cooperatives. We conclude that women-only cooperatives are not more effective for women’s empowerment than mixed-gender cooperatives. However, because women have limited access to mixed-gender cooperatives, women-only cooperatives are generally more accessible for the majority of them.

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合作成员资格对增强妇女权能有影响吗？来自南印度乳制品生产商的证据

摘要农村妇女为南亚的农业生产和发展做出了巨大贡献，并促进了农民合作社的赋权。但是，关于合作社成员资格对妇女的影响的证据有限。在本文中，我们使用313名女性奶粉生产商的数据，评估了印度南部的女性合作社和混合性别合作社的成员资格对女性家庭内部决策权的影响。倾向得分匹配和两步控制功能方法可用于解决由于观察到和未观察到的因素引起的选择偏差。我们发现，仅女性合作社或性别混合合作社的成员资格对家庭内部决策权都有积极影响。特别是，与仅女性合作社的成员相比，混合性别合作社的成员在乳制品生产决策方面拥有更大的权力。我们得出结论，只有妇女的合作社在增强妇女权能方面没有比混合性别的合作社更有效。但是，由于妇女获得混合性别合作社的机会有限，因此，大多数妇女只能使用妇女专用合作社。