FAC Working Paper 26. Gender Analysis: Engaging with Rural Development and Agricultural Policy Processes

Abstract

One of the great ironies of the last 40 years is that sub-Saharan Africa, a continent of ‘female farming par excellence’ (Boserup 1970), became populated, at least within much development discourse, by rural women represented as either ‘cardboard victims or heroines’ (Cornwall et al. 2004). How did this disjuncture come about? What have been its implications for agricultural development policy and practice? How can more nuanced understandings of gender and social relations be fruitfully brought into agricultural research and policy processes?

The paper details the way in which gender has been incorporated, or not, into agricultural research and development activities, and then continues with the argument about a social relational gender perspective. The paper ends with some indications as to how more nuanced understandings of gender and social relations can be fruitfully brought into agricultural research and policy processes.

Citation

Okali, C. FAC Working Paper 26. Gender Analysis: Engaging with Rural Development and Agricultural Policy Processes. Future Agricultures Consortium, Brighton, UK (2012) 19 pp.

FAC Working Paper 26. Gender Analysis: Engaging with Rural Development and Agricultural Policy Processes

Published 1 January 2012