Gender and women in scientific literature on bioeconomy: A systematic review

A social vision is slowly emerging of the bioeconomy as an avenue towards sustainability. This paper presents a systematic review of the existing literature on the connection between gender (as a social dimension) and bioeconomy. We have reviewed 244 scientific publications which explicitly mention bioeconomy and gender/women in their title, abstract, keywords or text; 127 documents were identified as having high (19) or medium (108) gender-oriented centrality. The literature is fragmented but six cross-sectional key themes have been identified: Gender and social impacts of the bioeconomy; gender equality as a goal and a just policy; gender differences in perceptions, discourses and strategies relating to the bioeconomy; women as potential stakeholders and actors in the transition towards bioeconomy; frameworks, strategies, and tools to connect gender and the bioeconomy; and gender inequalities and geography. Moreover, they show hardly any connection with the three predominant social currents in the struggle for gender equality: grassroots social movements, ecofeminism, and intersectionality. The paper concludes by identifying key pathways for future research to address current gaps. We suggest integrating a feminist metatheoretical base with an integrative ontology, an epistemology that recognises its own partiality and situationality, and a methodology sensitive to the specificities of the contexts which are committed to the goal of transforming women's everyday contexts.