crop losses are also higher for femaleheaded households in lao people s democratic republic amounting to per cent of total rice production compared with per cent for maleheaded households faosida b globally fao estimates suggest that providing women with the same access to productive resources as men could increase yields on their farms by per cent raising total agricultural output by per cent this suggests an important distinction between gender inequalities that arise directly from gender norms and what might be called contingent inequalities those which arise indirectly from the interaction between the resulting disadvantages and those due to poverty they may on average have more limited educational opportunities because of gender biases in household decisionmaking andor differential provision