Gender research and gender empowerment, particularly through the increased participation of women in extension services and activities, are recommended components in development initiatives toward achieving gender equality, food security, and improved health in rural populations. Gender dynamics have been under-researched in the agricultural technology literature on Sub-Saharan Africa. This article contributes a gender-based analysis of the Nutritious Maize for Ethiopia (NuME) project, an initiative implemented through a partnership among national and international institutes for agriculture and public health. NuME promotes production of quality protein maize (QPM), a group of nutritionally improved or biofortified maize varieties, to improve food and nutritional security. Combining baseline data and case studies of project sites, our analysis illuminates opportunities and obstacles to the adoption and impact of QPM. We find that women in the project face barriers toward the adoption and effective utilization of such technologies. These include less contact with agricultural extension, lower awareness of QPM, and less input into decisions on and key aspects of adoption, production, and marketing. Our findings confirm a link between gender inequalities and food insecurity. We conclude with specific policy recommendations and gender empowerment strategies for governments and implementing partners to improve women's access to agricultural technologies and services.

International conventions and domestic laws have been enacted to prevent, punish and eradicate violence against women worldwide. However, these progressive policy initiatives have faced opposition in contentious contexts where policy rivals have contested their creation and implementation. Existing scholarship focuses primarily on progressive networks that have led to policy advances, such as violence against women (VAW) policies, while emerging literature has noted their limited impact and implementation. However, there is scant attention paid to one major underlying cause of limited impact and problematic implementation: that there is sustained opposition to these policies by policy rivals that resist and undermine progressive policies. We identify opponents and entrenched opposition to VAW laws in Mexico and Nicaragua in the 1990s and 2010s. We also identify how these opponents leverage ties with the state and utilise ‘family discourse’, framing progressives as anti-family, as strategies and mechanisms for stunting and even reversing VAW laws.

The global coronavirus pandemic has reified divisions, inequity, and injustices rooted in systems of domination such as racism, sexism, neoliberal capitalism, and ableism. Feminist scholars have theorized these interlocking systems of domination as the “continuum of violence.” Building on this scholarship, we conceptualize the U.S. response to and the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic as reflective of the continuum of violence. We argue that crises like pandemics expose the antidemocratic and exclusionary practices inherent in this continuum, which is especially racialized and gendered. To support our argument, we provide empirical evidence of the continuum of violence in relation to COVID-19 vis-à-vis the interrelated issues of militarization and what feminists call “everyday security,” such as public health and gender-based violence. The continuum of violence contributes theoretically and practically to our understanding of how violence that the pandemic illuminates is embedded in broader systems of domination and exclusion.

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To study the impacts of implementing a gender-sensitive value chain development (VCD) initiative in the agri-food sector, we conducted a mixed-methods study of a woman-owned food processing business and its associated value chain in Touba, Senegal. As a result of partnering with a USAID-funded project, the business began producing instant fortified flours, an innovative, higher-value product compared to traditional porridge, using extrusion and fortification techniques. Drawing on Senegalese women’s association networks, the business connected with local women who could work as processors and retailers. Our study’s goal was to explore how the project’s support of this food processing value chain has affected the lives of women processors and retailers, farmers, and medical personnel along the value chain. Particularly relevant to our study is the general lack of opportunities for women to earn their own incomes in the study region, especially outside of the home, and provide for their families. Through surveys, interviews, observations, and novel participatory focus group activities, our study provides qualitative and quantitative evidence of the perceived impacts of value chain development on women’s empowerment, income, and nutrition by key stakeholders in the value chain. We find an often cited barrier to women’s empowerment is the husband’s lack of understanding and limitations placed on women’s mobility, yet we also find perceptions of women’s empowerment in this conservative religious context. Our findings and discussion highlight the need for more research into VCD projects on the complex and, at times, contradictory processes of women’s empowerment. The women in our study expressed a desire for freedom to work outside of the home, and they expressed a need for childcare and contraception. Notably, the women discussed positive community changes, such as infrastructure and the creation of a childcare center, that implicate women’s collective empowerment. We also highlight a promising research opportunity in Senegal to explore the subnational variation in women’s empowerment through VCD.