This article contributes to understanding the potential of agricultural co-operatives to boost women’s empowerment and close gender gaps in sub-Saharan Africa. It provides quasi-experimental evidence of the impact of membership of an agricultural co-operative on women’s capabilities, their power and ability to influence decisions, and intra-household productive and reproductive labour divisions. It uses the P’KWI Farmer to Farmer Co-operative Society in north-eastern Uganda as a case study. It shows that being a member of P’KWI has a significantly positive impact on economic wellbeing, knowledge and adoption of agronomic practices, especially among women. Co-operative membership has a particularly strong positive impact on women’s decision making power at the household, group and community levels. Intra-household domestic and farm related labour divisions, however, did not change as a result of co-operative membership and remain disadvantageous for women. The article concludes that agricultural co-operatives can make a significant difference for women’s empowerment, provided that they actively and consistently address the bottlenecks to achieve gender equality.

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农业合作社对增强妇女权能的影响：来自乌干达的证据

本文有助于了解农业合作社在增强撒哈拉以南非洲妇女赋权和缩小性别差距方面的潜力。它为农业合作社成员资格对妇女的能力，妇女影响决策的权力和能力以及家庭内部生产和生殖劳动部门的影响提供了准实验证据。它以乌干达东北部的P'KWI农民到农民合作社为案例研究。它表明，成为P'KWI的一员，特别是在妇女中，对经济福祉，知识和采用农艺方法产生了显着的积极影响。合作社成员资格对妇女在家庭，团体和社区各级的决策权具有特别强烈的积极影响。但是，家庭内部与家庭和农场有关的劳动分工并没有因合作社成员制而改变，对妇女仍然不利。文章的结论是，只要农业合作社积极，始终如一地解决实现性别平等的瓶颈，就可以对赋予妇女权力产生重大影响。