Women in coffee farming: what the figures say about work, land and money

On many coffee farms, women do much of the work, but they are less likely to own the land or receive the money from sales.The 70 per cent figure in context, land and income in numbers, labels and programmes.

Most coffee grows on small family farms. Women, men and children work side by side there, often with no fixed roles on paper. How large the women’s share of this work is can therefore only be roughly estimated.

The data on who owns the land and the trees, and in whose name the coffee is sold, are much more precise. The most comprehensive analysis for coffee comes from the International Coffee Organization (ICO) in 2018. It relies mainly on studies from East Africa and Latin America.

The 70 per cent figure: where it comes from and what it counts

Almost every text on the subject says that women do 70 per cent of the work in coffee farming. The ICO also cites the figure in its 2018 report. It takes it from a 2008 article by the International Trade Centre, an agency of the UN and the World Trade Organization.

The ICO itself qualifies the figure. Its summary says ‘up to 70 per cent, depending on the region’. Women farmers, unpaid family helpers and hired female workers are counted together. In highly mechanised countries such as Brazil, the report says women work far less often in growing and harvesting.

Then there is the data. Africa, especially East Africa, is well covered in the report, Asia hardly at all. The ICO explicitly warns against applying the figures to the whole coffee sector. So the 70 per cent is an upper benchmark for some regions, not a global average.

The figure is often extended with a second part, saying that women receive only 10 per cent of the income. This claim is not in the ICO report. We have not found a reliable, dated source for it in coffee, so we do not use it.

There are better figures for agriculture as a whole. In 2014, the agricultural economist Cheryl Doss found that women make up just over 40 per cent of the agricultural workforce worldwide. Even in sub-Saharan Africa the figure was below 50 per cent. In 2018, she and colleagues tested common claims. The statement that women produce 60 to 80 per cent of food could not be supported with data.

Invisible work: why statistics often overlook women

Part of the uncertainty lies in the counting itself. Some surveys only record the person who runs a farm. Others count households headed by a woman, often widows or single women. A wife who picks and sorts on her husband’s field shows up in neither case.

A survey from Uganda cited in the ICO report shows how much this matters. Around a third of adult women said they were responsible for growing coffee. Among male heads of household, the figure was over 90 per cent. In this way, women’s work disappears into the household statistics.

The gap also shows in knowledge. In a Ugandan sample of 453 households, 58 per cent of male heads of household attended training for coffee farmers. Among women farmers, it was 46 per cent. How much manual work goes into coffee from flowering to green coffee is shown in From coffee tree to cup.

Land and trees: women own far less

The figures on ownership are more reliable. According to the ICO, 20 to 30 per cent of coffee farms worldwide are run by women. That equals around 5 million of an estimated 25 million coffee producers. No single survey lies behind this range; the ICO compiled it from several studies.

In coffee, land is more than just an area. A coffee tree only bears fruit after a few years and then for decades. Without land of your own, you often lack security for a loan and therefore money for fertiliser or new plants. On women’s plots in Uganda, the coffee trees were on average just over 8 per cent older.

Income: the money often goes to whoever sells

The proceeds usually go to the person who delivers the coffee to the cooperative or a trader. In many households, that is the man. The ICO analysed World Bank data from three East African countries on this.

The route to market explains part of the gap. Freshly picked cherries fetch less than green coffee that has already been processed and dried. In Uganda, women farmers sold only 18 per cent of their coffee as green coffee, men 29 per cent. The researchers see lower prices as a likely result.

Colombia and Ecuador show that the gap is not inevitable. There, yields and prices on farms run by women and men were almost the same. Where women have similar access to land, advice and markets, the gap shrinks.

The FAO’s view: equality as a question of productivity

In April 2023, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published a major report on agriculture as a whole. For farms of the same size, it found women farmers’ productivity to be 24 per cent below men’s. In paid work, women earn 82 cents for every dollar men receive.

The FAO attributes both to unequal access to land, inputs, credit and knowledge. If the gaps were closed, its model suggests the global economy would grow by almost 1 trillion US dollars, just under €890 billion (our conversion). The estimate covers all agrifood systems together and cannot be scaled down to coffee.

Labels, cooperatives and programmes: what the evidence shows

Labels work through the cooperative or the certificate holder. Registered members deliver the coffee, receive the money and vote on the premium. Women without land of their own are therefore often not members at all. In two Kenyan cooperatives, the share of women was 29 and 34 per cent, according to the ICO.

The effect of certification on this has hardly been studied properly. In 2012, a study from the University of Göttingen surveyed 419 robusta-growing households in central Uganda. In non-certified households, the man alone decided on the coffee money in 60 per cent of cases. In certified households, it was 44 per cent.

The authors stress that this simple comparison is not yet proof of cause and effect. Their data come from a single survey, and the results cannot easily be applied to other countries.

No label shows what female harvest workers earn. A 2017 review found no proven positive effects of certification on workers’ wages, although the evidence was thin. What each label covers is explained in Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance and direct trade.

Targeted programmes usually focus on membership. In Ethiopia, a two-year cooperative programme run by a US development organisation brought 3,619 women into membership for the first time. That was an increase of 25 per cent. In addition, 114 women took on leadership roles, doubling their number.

Networks such as the International Women’s Coffee Alliance have worked on the issue since 2003. It was founded by women from Costa Rica, Nicaragua and the USA. Today, the alliance says it has 35 independent national chapters on every continent. It does not publish impact data that could be compared with studies.

For buying coffee, this adds up to few simple answers. A higher price for green coffee only helps if it reaches the person who did the work. Why good coffee costs more and where the money goes is explained in Why specialty coffee costs so much.

The gap between women and men in coffee lies less in the work than in ownership. Income is decided by the land register, the cooperative’s membership list and the question of whose name the coffee is sold under. This is where the programmes with the best evidence so far come in.

Last updated: 24 October 2026.