ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we review literature on gender-mainstreaming in agricultural and forestry institutions in the global North and South through the lens of two cases – the CGIAR and one of its organizations in Nepal, IWMI, and the Lantbrukarnas Riksförbund (LRF)’s Gender-Equality Academy in Sweden. Both these institutions took up gender-mainstreaming as a strategy and we follow their work in relation to dominant themes from the literature on gender-mainstreaming. A striking parallel across the global South and North is the lack of discussion on land ownership and systemic inequalities in mainstreaming attempts. Another parallel is the penchant for silver bullets in relation to gender-mainstreaming, for example in the partiality towards economic empowerment/women’s entrepreneurship and assumption of neutral markets. One major difference between the North and South is the support to collectives/networks in the South in mainstreaming attempts that has enabled action and claims by women as may be seen in the literature and in the CGIAR gender network. The focus in the North has remained on the individual woman. Here, women got together in the #metoo movement to challenge the system. We also highlight the issue of men as figureheads for mainstreaming and the cleavages between the natural and social sciences that become apparent in mainstreaming attempts.
