Mapping the Gender Gap in Italian Agriculture From Plains to Peaks, 2012 and 2021

This paper examines how gender gaps in Italian agriculture changed between 2012 and 2021 and whether those changes differed across plains, hills, and mountains. We argue that gender gaps in agriculture are terrain‐conditioned: the same resources carry different value across ecological zones because physical, infrastructural, and institutional conditions interact with gendered access to land, water, and markets. Using harmonized Italian Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) microdata, we estimate design‐weighted indicators in constant 2021 euros for women‐ and men‐managed farms at the national level and across altimetric belts. Both groups underwent a shared process of restructuring—greater organizational formalization, lower reliance on family‐only labor, wider use of rented land, and rising capital intensity—yet these common shifts did not produce a uniform pattern of convergence. Instead, gender differences varied across terrains: women‐managed farms gained operated area in every belt but converted it into revenue and margins unevenly, most visibly in the mountains, where substantial land expansion coincided with only modest income gains and a declining irrigated share. Reading these patterns through feminist rural sociology and feminist political ecology, the paper shows that gender inequality in Italian agriculture is better understood as a terrain‐conditioned outcome of gendered resource access than as a single national divide.