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Paper short abstract:

Gender role in a family has no effect on the food security status of the household, variables like level of education, farming experience and household annual income that positively affected food security should be given more attention, and ways of enhancing them should be encouraged.

Paper long abstract:

Nigerian economy has hitherto remained agrarian since agriculture is the main source of food and the main employer of labour, employing about 60-70% of the population. It is a significant sector of the economy and also the source of a lot of raw materials used in the processing industries, as well as a source of foreign exchange earnings for the country. The study adopted multi-stage sampling technique. Firstly, three states was purposively selected from the Southwest States, The purposive selection was based on States with highest agricultural production. Secondly, three LGA were randomly selected in each of the State. Thirdly, 50 households farmers in each LGA were randomly selected giving a total of (450) respondents whose responses formed the data for the study. It was observed in this study that variables such as household size, farm size and age were the major factors that affected gender roles in a household. Since age negatively affected gender roles (the proportion of work done by women) in a household, it is recommended that farmers should engage in more productive activities at their younger ages to ensure increased efficiency and effectiveness of labour use . Variables such as farm size and household size positively affected gender roles which suggested that when a household has more farm holdings and farm sizes, it encourages more activities in the farm, hence increase in gender roles. However, responsibilities in households should be appropriately shared so as to accommodate the strengths and weaknesses of each gender in the household.