Towards gender-inclusive innovation: Assessing local conditions for agricultural targeting.

The importance of gender norms in agricultural innovation processes has been recognized. However, the operational integration of these normative issues into the innovation strategies of agricultural interventions remains challenging. This article advances a replicable, integrative research approach that captures key local conditions to inform the design and targeting of gender-inclusive interventions. We focus on the gender climate across multiple contexts to add to the limited indicators available for assessing gender norms at scale. The notion of gender climate refers to the socially constituted rules that prescribe men's and women's behaviour in a specific geographic location-with some being more restrictive and others more relaxed. We examine the gender climate of 70 villages across 13 countries where agriculture is an important livelihood. Based on data from the GENNOVATE initiative we use multivariate methods to identify three principal components: 'Gender Climate', 'Opportunity' and 'Connectivity'. Pairwise correlation and variance partitioning analyses investigate the linkages between components. Our findings evidence that favourable economic or infrastructure conditions do not necessarily correlate with favourable gender normative conditions. Drawing from two case-study villages from Nepal, we highlight opportunities for agricultural research for development interventions. Overall, our approach allows to integrate local knowledge about gender norms and other local conditions into the planning and targeting strategies for agricultural innovation.

Making room for manoeuvre: addressing gender norms to strengthen the enabling environment for agricultural innovation.

Local gender norms constitute a critical component of the enabling (or disabling) environment for improved agricultural livelihoods - alongside policies, markets, and other institutional dimensions. Yet, they have been largely ignored in agricultural research for development. This viewpoint is based on many years of experience, including a recent major comparative research initiative, GENNOVATE, on how gender norms and agency interact to shape agricultural change at local levels. The evidence suggests that approaches which engage with normative dimensions of agricultural development and challenge underlying structures of inequality, are required to generate lasting gender-equitable development in agriculture and natural resource management.

Leaving no one behind: how women seize control of wheat-maize technologies in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is strongly committed to the "leave no one behind" principle of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. However, social norms and institutional biases in agricultural organisations can prevent indigenous peoples and women from participating in wheat-maize innovation processes, as they rarely meet the requisite criteria: sufficient land, social capital or formal education. The GENNOVATE (Enabling Gender Equality in Agricultural and Environmental Innovation) research initiative in Bangladesh shows that indigenous Santal women are obtaining access to and benefiting from wheat-maize innovations, enabling low-income Muslim women to benefit as well.

Le Bangladesh est fortement attaché au principe que personne ne soit « laissé pour compte ¼, l'un des Objectifs de développement durable de l'ONU. Cependant, certaines normes sociales et biais institutionnels au sein de organisations agricoles empêchent parfois les Autochtones et les femmes de prendre part à des processus d'innovations relatives à la culture du maïs et du blé, car ils répondent rarement aux critères requis : terres suffisantes, capital social ou éducation formelle. Au Bangladesh, l'initiative de recherche GENNOVATE (Promouvoir l'égalité de genre dans l'innovation agricole et environnementale) montre que les femmes autochtones du Santal obtiennent accès aux « innovations blé-maïs ¼ et en bénéficient, ce qui permet également aux femmes musulmanes à faible revenu d'en bénéficier.

From Working in the Wheat Field to Managing Wheat: Women Innovators in Nepal.

There is very little research on women in wheat in Nepal, and wheat is still considered a 'man's crop'. Consequently, extension services rarely target women, and women are not considered as innovators. However, research conducted in the Terai plains in 2014/15 shows that women are innovating in wheat to the extent that wheat farming is experiencing a shift from feminisation of agricultural labour towards women taking control over decision-making. Processes accounting for this include male outmigration, non-governmental organisation (NGO) work on promoting women's equality which has developed women's confidence, individual support from extension agents and strong cooperation between women to foster each other's 'innovation journeys'. Women who lived in seclusion 10 years ago are receiving recognition within their families and communities. This article provides recommendations for researchers, rural advisory services and other partners to bring their work in alignment with the realities of women wheat innovators.

Gender and agricultural innovation in Oromia region, Ethiopia: from innovator to tempered radical.

Tempered radicals are change agents who experience the dominant culture as a violation of the integrity and authenticity of their personal values and beliefs. They seek to move forward whilst challenging the status quo. Does the concept provide a useful analytic lens through which the strategies of women and men farmer innovators, who are 'doing things differently' in agriculture, can be interpreted? What are their strategies for turning ambivalence and tension to their advantage? The paper uses research data derived from two wheat-growing communities in Oromia Region, Ethiopia, an area characterized by generally restrictive gendered norms and a technology transfer extension system. The findings demonstrate that women and men innovators actively interrogate and contest gender norms and extension narratives. Whilst both women and men innovators face considerable challenges, women, in particular, are precariously located 'outsiders within,' negotiating carefully between norm and sanction. Although the findings are drawn from a small sample, they have implications for interventions aiming to support agricultural innovation processes which support women's, as well as men's, innovatory practice. The framework facilitates a useful understanding of how farmer innovators operate and in particular, significant differences in how women and men interrogate, negotiate and align themselves with competing narratives.

The dynamics of smallholder farmers' acquisition and distribution of sweetpotato vines in the Lake Victoria Zone Region, Tanzania.

This paper offers new insights into smallholder farmer's practices regarding acquisition and distribution of sweetpotato planting material in the Mwanza and Mara regions of Tanzania by examining three specific issues: (i) farmers' sources of planting material; (ii) factors that influence farmers' sourcing of planting materials outside their own farms and (iii) the types of transactions and social relations involved in farmers' acquisition and distribution of sweetpotato planting material. Data were collected using mixed methods, including a survey of 621 households across nine districts, semi-structured key informant interviews with 28 women sweetpotato farmers, and six focus group discussions. Findings show that farmers in the study area rely almost exclusively on informal seed systems, and that the majority (> 56%) produce their own planting material. Individual, household and community level factors influence farmers' acquisition of planting materials outside their own farms. The sources and mode of transaction related to acquisition/distribution of planting material are strongly influenced by the type of social relationship between the parties involved. Strong social ties facilitate the majority of local planting material acquisitions/distributions, and favor provision of locally available planting material as a gift/without payment.Weak social ties are primarily associated with the transaction modality of purchase/sale, and frequently help facilitate acquisition of new or exotic planting material. The findings provide entry points both for entities that seek to enhance small-scale farmers' access to improved, high quality sweetpotato germplasm, as well as broader efforts to strengthen research and development strategies for integrating formal and informal seed systems.