Women's Labour and Mechanization in Mediterranean Greenhouse Farming

This paper analyses differences in productivity by worker's gender in greenhouse agricultural work, using time-study techniques applied to indoor tomato cultivation in Spain. The results show that women had on average a 107.5% greater efficiency compared with men, and that this was evident across all tasks subject to evaluation. Although they were rarely assigned to them due to gender stereotyping, the performance of female workers in tasks involving machinery operation, such as a motorized elevated platform, was shown to be superior to that of men. If the labour were exclusively female for the tasks studied, it would result in net time savings of 44.8%, or 1,286 hours of work per hectare for tomato cultivation. This analysis contributes to our understanding of the consequences of gender stereotyping in rural employment, and shows how greenhouse agriculture could be more sustainable if these issues were addressed.

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