ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the gender dimensions of the expansion of forms of large-scale, corporate production of agrofuels destined for commercial use and consumption in distant places. Combining feminist political ecology and agrarian studies perspectives and survey the available research on the direct and indirect implications of corporate agrofuels expansion for shifts in gendered power and labour relations, access to resources and livelihoods, incorporation in new production regimes and gendered responses to these changes. The Lao PDR, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Zambia reports are all part of a Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) programme, which investigates the gender and social equity implications of land-related investments. Women are regarded as being particularly vulnerable when common land is diverted to biofuels feedstock production. The event that gender justice and empowerment for rural women could be achieved, to assume that all rural women would choose farming as opposed to engagement with corporate agriculture is quite a leap of faith.
