What Happened to Gender-Intentional Participatory Research in Agriculture?

Abstract

The chapter analyzes the evolution of participatory research in agriculture and how gender and gender analysis have been used within it. In the late twentieth century, farmer participation in agricultural research was a strategy for social justice, to share power with the rural poor and organize them as a client base. However, feminist research in the 1990s noted that participatory research often reinforced gender norms in agriculture. In the 1980s participatory research was incorporated into the international agricultural research system. In the 1990s gender mainstreaming was adopted in the international centers. However, these science bureaucracies soon divorced gender and participatory research from any political engagement. Research managers saw participatory research, and gender analysis, as ways to design better farm technology, and ease its dissemination. By 2010, participatory plant breeding was widely adopted. In the early 2010s the system again became interested in gender equality. There is now a need for participatory research to become fully gender-intentional, to empower women and farming communities. The large-scale transformation of agriculture calls for a fundamental change in how research engages with its client base, among the rural poor.