ABSTRACT
Gender relations come into play as women and men engage in a food system under different conditions – whether in production, trading, employment, agribusiness or food consumption: if they have contrasting goals and constraints, or if they develop different strategies based on systematic differences in rights, opportunities and resource endowments. The main remedy promoted for the resultant gender gaps in technology adoption and productivity are “equal access” policies designed to level the playing field for rural men and women in terms of their access to land, capital, markets and development services. The assumption of the equal access approach is that closing the gender gap means that male and female farmers can and will adopt the same technology. This chapter questions this approach by examining the case for a diversity of agricultural technologies, some of which may be gender neutral, but others of which may purposively incorporate a gender bias in favor of women. Our question is whether there is a rationale for the design of technologies that deliberately target men and women differently without condemning either to relative disadvantage. Plant breeding provides a useful process with which to explore the case for gender-responsive diversity of technology. User acceptance of the end products of breeding is often heavily dependent on preferences for varietal traits which can be differentiated by gender. We review 39 case studies which have examined gender-differentiated plant trait preferences. The studies consistently evidence a number of traits that are given more importance by women. Further analysis of the cases shows that some preferences such as the priority given to quality traits are strongly expressed by women and associated with their traditional responsibilities for food preparation, but may be equally important to men. The evidence from these studies does not lead to the conclusion that breeders need to develop varieties specifically for women, but it does suggest the importance of ensuring that adaptation and use traits important for women are represented in breeding material.
