Farmer groups and cooperatives are widely promoted across sub-Saharan Africa as a pathway to empowerment, particularly for women, who make up the majority of the region's agricultural workforce yet remain disadvantaged in access to land, credit and markets. A new study in Food and Energy Security investigates: does belonging to a supported farmer network actually shift the balance of decision-making power between men and women, or does it deliver economic benefits while leaving the balance untouched?
Measuring Farmer Network participation
Researchers surveyed 653 common bean farmers across 13 districts in Uganda, comparing members of groups supported by the MasterCard Farmer Network, or MFN, a digital platform connecting farmers to markets, payments and information with members of similar, unsupported farmer groups. The study focused on "individual-level collective agency," defined as a person's ability to work together with others to pursue shared and personal goals through leadership, collaboration, collective action, and collective marketing. Importantly, the authors distinguish collective agency from economic participation, arguing that increased market access or income does not automatically translate into greater voice, influence, or decision-making power. Members of MFN-supported groups did show higher collective agency overall. On average, MFN members recorded higher collective-agency scores (0.68) than non-MFN members (0.63). The strongest difference was observed in collective marketing, where approximately half of MFN members marketed their produce collectively compared with only 28% of farmers in unsupported groups.
Interestingly, the relationship between support and empowerment was not uniform across all dimensions. While MFN members outperformed non-MFN farmers in collective marketing and market engagement, farmers in unsupported groups reported greater confidence in their potential to become leaders (81% versus 70%). This finding suggests that improvements in economic participation do not necessarily translate into stronger perceptions of leadership and influence.
But gender turned out to be a stronger and more persistent factor than group membership. In nearly every comparison, men reported higher leadership confidence and higher collective-marketing participation than women, and network support did not narrow that gap, appearing instead to widen it on the leadership measure. This highlights the enduring influence of social and cultural norms on women's participation and leadership.
Women and men follow different pathways to empowerment
Access to agricultural training was more strongly linked to gains in women's agency, while extension services mattered more for men; and older women in particular showed lower collective agency, likely reflecting the compounding effects of caregiving duties and constrained land access as women age. These findings demonstrate that age and gender intersect to shape how farmers participate and benefit from collective action.
The authors conclude that digital market platforms and similar economic interventions can meaningfully increase women's participation in group activity, but participation and even income gains are not the same as equal agency. The findings show that women benefited from MFN participation and gained new opportunities to engage in collective economic activities, yet these benefits were not sufficient to overcome entrenched gender inequalities. Without deliberately confronting the social norms that shape who lead and who decides, such programs risk reinforcing existing gender inequalities within farmer groups rather than reducing them.
The findings arrive as the United Nations marks 2026 as the International Year of the Woman Farmer, a global campaign highlighting women's essential but often undervalued contributions across agrifood systems and pushing for policies to close persistent gender gaps. The study's authors argue that meeting the Year's goals will require agricultural programs and digital platforms to build gender-transformative elements, such as targeted leadership training and community engagement on social norms, into their design from the start, rather than treating gender equity as a byproduct of economic support.
Food and Energy Security
Does the Interplay Between Gender and Group Type Shape Collective Agency? Evidence From Mastercard Farmer Network in Uganda
20-Jul-2026