“We discuss, he decides”: Gendered intra-household decision-making on sorghum farming in Kenya's Lake Victoria region

Intra-household decision-making shapes smallholder agricultural production, marketing, and consumption, yet empirical research conceptualizes it in ways that obscure underlying power dynamics. This study examines how decision-making processes unfold between men and women within sorghum-farming households in Kenya's Lake Victoria region. Drawing on focus groups and in-depth household interviews, we apply an inductive thematic analysis to examine how responsibility, authority, and control are distributed and negotiated in the crop's production and utilization cycle. Findings show a gendered division of labor: decision-making is widely described as “joint,” yet in practice, it is negotiated within unequal power relations, with strategic decisions remaining predominantly male. Women shoulder primary responsibility for household food management despite having limited control over productive resources, creating a responsibility–authority gap in the household. Cultural norms and traditions function as informal institutions that reinforce gendered hierarchies and legitimize asymmetric decision-making. Sorghum's dual role as both a subsistence and a commercial crop amplifies these dynamics, generating gendered trade-offs that reflect underlying inequalities in authority and control. This study demonstrates that joint decision-making often masks unequal power relations, highlighting the need for a deeper understanding of women's agency. Gender-transformative dialogues that involve couples and communities and are integrated into existing farmer training and extension activities may help to renegotiate roles, expectations, and household decision-making.