Gender Issues of Labour Participation in Vegetable Production in Ikorodu Local Government Area of Lagos State

The study was conducted to identify and specify gender tasks and roles in vegetable production with ultimate goal of better targeting the resources in agricultural sector. One hundred and twenty vegetable farmers were surveyed in Ikorodu local government area of Lagos State. Multistage stage sampling technique was used to select one hundred and twenty (120) vegetable farmers as the sample for the study. Data was collected by means of structured questionnaire. Percentages, Means and Frequencies were the main descriptive statistical tools utilized while Pearsons’ correlation coefficients were estimated to ascertain the association between women participation and selected socioeconomic variables. The findings revealed that 87.50% of females and 91.07% male vegetable farmers fall between the ages of 20-50 years with a mean age of 50.85 years. 65.61% of females and 30.36% of males’ vegetable farmers had formal education while none of the vegetable farmers receive post-secondary education. The role of women in majority of the cases was supportive in nature while the dominative role in most of the cases was performed by men. Correlation analysis revealed that Age, marital status, farming experience and Farm size were positively related with women participation in vegetable production. Education had no relationship with women participation in vegetable production. It was suggested that projects and programmes that aim to increase vegetable production should be designed to address the complementary roles that men and women farmers play.