Gender and agricultural innovation in Oromia region, Ethiopia: from innovator to tempered radical

Abstract

Tempered radicals are change agents who experience the dominant culture as a violation of the integrity and authenticity of their personal values and beliefs. They seek to move forward whilst challenging the status quo. Does the concept provide a useful analytic lens through which the strategies of women and men farmer innovators, who are ‘doing things differently’ in agriculture, can be interpreted? What are their strategies for turning ambivalence and tension to their advantage? The paper uses research data derived from two wheat-growing communities in Oromia Region, Ethiopia, an area characterized by generally restrictive gendered norms and a technology transfer extension system. The findings demonstrate that women and men innovators actively interrogate and contest gender norms and extension narratives. Whilst both women and men innovators face considerable challenges, women, in particular, are precariously located ‘outsiders within,’ negotiating carefully between norm and sanction. Although the findings are drawn from a small sample, they have implications for interventions aiming to support agricultural innovation processes which support women’s, as well as men’s, innovatory practice. The framework facilitates a useful understanding of how farmer innovators operate and in particular, significant differences in how women and men interrogate, negotiate and align themselves with competing narratives.

Women Farmers and Agricultural Innovation: Marital Status and Normative Expectations in Rural Ethiopia

“…In addition, some single women seem to trade off achieving autonomy with respect to resources and agency, with an acceptance of marginalization. Using data from Oromia, Farnworth et al [31] found that whilst both women and men innovators face considerable challenges, women innovators, in particular, are precariously located 'outsiders within,' negotiating carefully between norm and sanction, and our data broadly support this.…”

“…This presumably relates back to the perception of men as "real farmers" and perhaps a wider scorning of women as not having a legitimate right to express their voices. There is an indication of such processes in Farnworth et al [31]. We also find that married women face fewer labor constraints.…”

“…Research from Ethiopia suggests that it is erroneous to consider women heads of households as fully autonomous. Rather, they occupy a kind of liminal zone between integration and isolation [31]. On the one hand, FHHs are recognized as a distinctive household type by policymakers.…”

Unequal partners: associations between power, agency and benefits among women and men maize farmers in Nigeria

“…As such they can denaturalize and expose gender norms and power relations because the adoption of such technologies inevitably requires women and men to renegotiate the rules of the game. A host of decisions need to be madefor example labor may be re-allocated, inorganic fertilizers purchased, crops may be switched between women-and men-managed plots, and the types of benefit household members expect to secure may change (Farnworth et al, 2017;Mutenje et al, 2019;Theriault et al, 2017). This article discusses gendered perceptions of benefits from IMVs; the focus is on the power relations that facilitate, or hinder, realization of those benefits, rather than the benefits themselves.…”

How local gender norms and intra-household dynamics shape women’s demand for laborsaving technologies: insights from maize-based livelihoods in Ethiopia and Kenya

“…The findings furthermore demonstrate how gender dynamics are constantly negotiated (Farnworth et al, 2018;Locke et al, 2017), for example, when wives try to convince their husband to rent tractor services or a shelling machine; or when selling her surplus maize, a female household head asks a male neighbor to accompany her to the market. Whether supportive or antagonistic, men's actions also contribute to this negotiationoften, but not always, in the form of asserting male authority, and in the worst case, by resorting to violence.…”