Women play a significant role in agricultural production in Africa, but they lag their male counterparts in access to the livelihoods assets (natural, human, financial, physical, social and political) necessary to adopt technologies and raise agricultural productivity. There is thus need for development and promotion of gender inclusive innovations that suit the preferences and constraints of men and women. Understanding gender roles and enabling environments for women’s empowerment along agricultural value chains is critical for the design of institutional innovations that equalize opportunities for women and men farmers and equally benefit women and men from the agricultural R4D and dissemination of technologies. The social science research studies conducted by the SSIAU generate evidence on enabling policies and institutions, as well as on gender roles in development outcomes. This helps to promote women’s empowerment, integration of gender in all stages of projects and strengthen the capacity of icipe scientists and partners to apply a gender lens in their work. This is crucial for achieving long lasting, equitable and bigger impacts of icipe’s science and technologies. Furthermore, the Centre addresses R4D questions related to youth through promoting technologies that create jobs and assessing the impacts of such technologies on livelihoods of youth. Over the past 5 years, several research studies were conducted at icipe on gender and technology adoption and the differential gender impacts on innovations.
Publications