Crop losses are also higher for female-headed households in Lao People’s Democratic Republic, amounting to 10 per cent of total rice production, compared with 4 per cent for male-headed households (FAO/SIDA, 2010b). Globally, FAO (2011) estimates suggest that providing women with the same access to productive resources as men could increase yields on their farms by 20-30 per cent, raising total agricultural output by 2.5-4 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 decision-making and/or differential provision.