Beyond the ‘gender gap’ in agriculture: Africa's Green Revolution and gendered rural transformation in Rwanda

Abstract

The African Green Revolution (AGR) aims to modernize, intensify, and commercialize agriculture through increasing technology adoption by smallholder farmers. AGR interventions also promote gender equality, aiming to close the ‘gender gap’ in agriculture by enhancing women's access to purchased inputs, technology, land, and finance. With an empirical focus on Rwanda, this article examines the gendered implications of the AGR. We critically reflect on the notion of gender gaps and the associated tendency of development research to treat gender as a variable, assessing outcomes for male-headed versus female-headed households in terms of their access to material assets. We argue that these assessments overlook (1) the differential impacts of AGR policies within households and (2) how agricultural modernization influences gendered access to material resources as well as immaterial responsibilities, norms, and identities. Our findings from a mixed-methods study with four Rwandan communities show how the AGR empowers men as ‘modern’ farmers while marginalizing women's agricultural spaces, labor, and crops. We argue that development research and practice should move beyond the narrow focus on gender gaps to additionally consider how technologies and policies are themselves gendered in ways that can constrict food security, entrench inequitable power dynamics, and further marginalize women.