During the peak planting season in 2026, women running climate-adapted seed-selling businesses in northern Nigeria made more profit per unit of sale compared to their male counterparts.
These early findings from Propcom+, a UK Government-funded programme promoting climate-resilient and sustainable agriculture in Nigeria, reveal a complex picture of women’s participation in agricultural markets. The ways women run their businesses can help keep costs down, while the social norms shaping their work can also constrain their growth.
On this International Day of Rural Women, 15 October 2026, we show why supporting women in agriculture means more than improving access to land, finance and technology. It also means understanding how social norms influence women’s economic opportunities and how programmes like Propcom+ can help expand them.
Social norms shape women’s opportunities in agriculture
In Nigeria, as across much of the world, women play essential roles across agrifood systems, yet continue to face barriers to owning land and accessing agricultural advice, inputs, technology and finance. Fewer than one in four Nigerian women in agriculture own or have secure rights to farmland, compared with more than half of men. In northern Nigeria, only 3% of women farmers receive advice and training from agricultural extension services, compared with 20% of men.
These gaps limit women’s ability to improve productivity and adopt agricultural innovations, including climate-smart seeds that could increase yields and help them adapt to a changing climate. In northern Nigeria, women produce 35% less per hectare than men.
But resource gaps are only part of the picture. Programme experience shows that social norms shape which crops women grow, which animals they own, whether they can enter more lucrative value chains, and how much time they can devote to farming alongside their unpaid care and domestic work responsibilities.
Two sets of norms are particularly important in northern Nigeria. Norms around seclusion (kulle in Hausa), although less restrictive than in the past, can still limit women’s ability, particularly where work involves travelling around (tafiye-tafiye in Hausa). Restrictions on interaction between men and women outside the family are a key reason why men that provide agricultural services do not reach female farmers. For example, women keep most of the poultry, yet it is often not acceptable for male animal health workers to enter their homes. As a result, women’s flocks may miss out on vaccinations and other essential care.
Women reaching women: recruiting female last-mile agents
Propcom+ works through private sector partners, including seed companies and animal health businesses, that rely on last-mile agents to reach farmers. These include Community Animal Health Workers, who deliver vaccines and other animal health services, and Rural Seed Promoters (RSPs) who buy certified, climate-adapted seeds from seed companies and sell them, alongside advice, to smallholder farmers.
These roles are predominantly filled by men. They are widely seen as “men’s jobs”, and businesses often recruit through existing, largely male networks. Yet given the norms around male–female interaction, female agents can reach women farmers that men cannot.
Propcom+ has therefore supported its private sector partners to recruit women deliberately. This has included revising eligibility criteria, incorporating recruitment targets into partnership agreements, and working with female-led businesses which may be better placed to recruit other women.
Partners are beginning to recognise the commercial potential. One seed company partner in Gombe explained that female RSPs “make use of some talents they have like accessing homes and cooperatives that men cannot”. Another partner in Adamawa put it more simply: “They are able to sell very well, I don’t know what magic they use…”
Social norms cut both ways: what the data reveals about women seed sellers
To better understand whether being an RSP is a profitable business, Propcom+ tracked the income, costs and profits of 69 RSPs, including 31 women, between January and July 2026. Early findings suggest that women and men operate their businesses differently.
Most women sell seeds from home rather than travelling to markets or farms, and rely on seed companies to deliver their stock. The same social norms that usually confine women’s work to the home also appear to lower their costs: during the peak planting season, male RSPs spent nearly five times as much on transport as their female counterparts. As a result, over the same period, women’s seed businesses made on average more than three times as much profit as men’s.
However, lower costs do not necessarily translate into greater opportunities for growth. Women reached around half as many farmers as men during the planting season, and were almost entirely inactive during the off-peak months. Their businesses were also less diversified: women were more likely to sell seeds for just one crop and buy from only one seed company, unlike men who diversified into more high-value seeds.
Access to capital emerged as a key constraint. While 87% of female RSPs identified a lack of capital as a barrier, the figure for men was 66%. Unpaid care and domestic work responsibilities also appear to play a role. Of the small number of RSPs who reported that household responsibilities hold them back, almost all were women.
Taken together, these findings illustrate the double-edged effects of social norms. Selling from home may reduce women’s operating costs, but restrictions on mobility, limited access to capital and unequal care responsibilities can also limit their customer base, business diversification and ability to operate throughout the year.
Next steps: helping women seed sellers grow their businesses
The findings are preliminary and do not, on their own, establish that social norms explain the differences in profitability. But they raise important questions about how women’s businesses can expand and become more sustainable.
Possible measures include improving access to working capital and a wider range of seed suppliers, strengthening links to customers beyond the main planting season, and exploring group-based approaches that could support business growth. Experience elsewhere in the programme also suggests that engaging husbands and community leaders can help women take on new, more lucrative roles.
Such approaches will need to be informed by women’s own priorities and designed carefully to avoid exposing them to backlash for challenging established norms. Supporting female entrepreneurs also means looking beyond profits alone to understand whether women have greater control over business decisions and greater influence over how they use their time.
Social norms shape not only how women farm, but how they do business. Enabling rural women to be successful entrepreneurs can support their economic empowerment while helping more farmers, many of them women, access the seeds and services they need to build climate resilience.
