Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Department of Agricultural and Extension Education and Evaluation
Document Type
Dissertation
Abstract
A critical link between gender equality and agricultural development has been established in the literature. However, disparities between genders have persisted in many areas of the developing world. One strategy that has been used to reduce gender inequalities has been educational outreach opportunities through agricultural extension, which has provided women a critical pathway to empowerment. Despite this, a lack of knowledge on the experiences of women in agriculture throughout Southeast Asia has served as a barrier to the advancement of such work. This investigation sought to better understand the issues facing this region’s fight to attain gender equality. To achieve this, I researched the phenomenon through a three-article anthology. In the first article, I used a feminist critique to compare the gender inequalities experienced in agriculture across two developing regions – Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. The second article explored how gender, media, and policy intersected in Thailand through a content analysis approach. In particular, the article examined to what extent Thailand’s newspaper coverage focused on women in agriculture and described how they had been portrayed since the introduction of the Thailand 4.0 policy in 2016. In the final article, I used an instrumental case study design to examine the experiences of women and perceptions of female agricultural faculty in Thailand’s higher education system. Findings from this study provided a better understanding of the status of gender equality and women’s empowerment in Southeast Asia while also creating a case for regionally targeted agricultural extension programing to better address gendered issues. Moving forward, future research should explore these issues more in-depth with a larger sample size to determine what strategies could be scaled to create regionally specific agricultural extension programs for women.
Date
11-3-2021
Recommended Citation
Richardson Gilley, Morgan Alyse, "Casting a Critical Lens on Global Development: A Multimethod Investigation of the Masculine Hegemonic Forces That Marginalize Women in Agriculture" (2021). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 5687.
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/5687
Committee Chair
Roberts, Richie
DOI
10.31390/gradschool_dissertations.5687