Increasing agreement on the relevance of gender and social equalities to agricultural development outcomes has not come with the same consensus within the development community regarding ways to intervene in the sector to foster equality. The guiding principles of agriculture research for development (AR4D) and its focus on capacity development can contribute to this debate and to advancing gender integration in the sector if the “social threads” within its principles are developed more thoroughly. The aim of the article is to articulate how the social dimension of AR4D could be further developed through the conceptualization and operationalization of gender-transformative approaches (GTAs). The article provides a case study from the aquaculture sector of Bangladesh to illustrate why this is needed, and it describes some ways forward to move GTAs into agricultural practice and test their contributions to development outcomes. Such an action research agenda will generate learning that can be used to make the most out of synergies between enhanced social equality and capacities to innovate.

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The ability of development interventions to catalyse and support innovation for—and by— women and men is undermined by lack of specific understanding about how gender norms interact with gender relations and what this means for innovation. This is also the case for Bangladesh despite substantive research and development investments in the past decade that have placed emphasis on gender norms, particularly those inhibiting women and girl’s education, women and girl’s health, and women’s economic empowerment. This paper analyses how men and women in South West Bangladesh perceive gender norms to affect their ability to innovate, adopt, and benefit from new technologies in aquaculture, fisheries and agricultural systems. Our qualitative findings from six villages in 2014 confirm that the engagement of women and men smallholders with agricultural innovation and its opportunities is gender-differentiated. We explore further: how gender norms shape these differences; which gender norms are most significant in the given context, when and for whom; and, finally, when and how are some women and men able to innovate in the context of these norms. In doing so, we highlight how gender norms interact with gender relations and wider structural inequalities to constrain and/or enable innovation for different women and men. We conclude that technical organizations seeking to promote innovation need to go beyond itemizing gender ‘gaps’ to engage more closely with underlying gender norms and the way they influence various women’s, and men’s, motivations, spheres of innovation, and valuations of outcomes.

This study explores the sustainability impacts of adopting an ecosystem approach in underutilized homestead ponds (ecoponds) operated by women in Bangladesh. Households with ecoponds have significantly higher fish productivity, fish diversity, and income generation potential compared to households with similar underutilized ponds. Furthermore, certain dimensions of women’s empowerment are improved at the individual and household level (e.g., control of income and productive assets), without, however, addressing wider structural inequalities. Food security impacts are rather inconclusive, as despite the higher consumption of more diverse fish species among ecopond households, there is no significant effect on overall dietary diversity.

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