ABSTRACT
For some, GMO crops epitomise the industrialised agrifood system, characterised by agglomeration and capital-intensive methods of damaging monocrop production; for others, GMO crops—also known as transgenic crops—represent important ways to reduce hunger, spread efficient farming techniques and combat climate change. This polarisation of GMO research represents a primary challenge for researchers, including for scholars of gender and agriculture. This chapter outlines some of the research to date on the relationships between gender, race, and GMOs, and suggests several promising approaches and areas for future research. Critical works interrogate the multiple dimensions of gender, power and difference these technologies pose, with Maori feminist perspectives and multidimensional approaches to gender and technologies offering especially important insights. Together, this body of work shows that the effects of transgenic crops are heterogeneous, context-specific, and depend on which traits are being modified. It also highlights that “non-scientific” perspectives, and the perspectives of people of color, indigenous people, and women especially, continue to be marginalized within debates surrounding transgenic crops and within the spaces and processes through which they are designed, developed, deployed, and regulated.
