A Review of Innovation Systems Framework as a Tool for Gendering Agricultural Innovations: Exploring Gender Learning and System Empowerment

Purpose:To reflect on the opportunities that a systems understanding of innovation provides for addressing gender issues relevant to women, and to provide some insight on how these might be tackled.Approach:Review of literature relating to gender issues and how they relate to achieving, on the one hand, equity and efficiency goals, and on the other hand innovation in agriculture. The analysis draws lessons that inform an analytical framework for gendering agricultural innovation in an African context.Findings:The analytical frameworks that have been used to debate gender have ignored the complex environment under which gender roles manifest. The review analyses the innovation systems framework as a tool for gendering agricultural innovations, including embedded activities like agricultural extension services. This framework has provision for actors and their roles in the agricultural innovation system and embedded sub activities.Practical implication:The article concludes with a call for a shift from gender analysis to gender learning 1 1. Gender learning refers to the way new experiences and local context should inform the process of making the agricultural innovations, including extension services, gender sensitive. This definition is drawn from innovation system literature where learning is seen as a way of changing products and services through conceptualisation of new ways of working to achieve different goals (Clark 2002 Clark, N. 2002. “Innovation Systems, Institutional Change and the New Knowledge Market: Implications for Third World Agricultural Development Economies of Innovation.” Economics of Innovation and New Technology 11 (4–5): 353–368. doi:10.1080/10438590200000004.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]; World Bank 2006 World Bank. 2006. Enhancing Agricultural Innovation: How to go Beyond the Strengthening of Research Systems. Economic Sector Report. Washington, DC: The World Bank.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). and a shift from women's empowerment to empowering innovation systems capacity. Originality/Value: In the current context under which agricultural systems are becoming increasingly integrated, an analytical approach that takes cognisance of the complex environment under which gender and gender roles manifest is of interest for policy-makers, gender advocates and development workers for identifying entry points for engendering innovations towards gender equity in Africa.