Agricultural Innovation and Social Sustainability: Gender, Social Reproduction and Labour

Samenvatting (Engelstalig)

This research explores why social progress towards gender equality in agrarian societies remains slow. It examines how policies and research address rural gender inequalities and, through agricultural innovation, influence and reshape farmers’ lives, with a focus on gendered agrarian labour. The results show that this slow progress can be attributed to several key factors: the dominant and narrow gender discourses produced by policies and research, which favour individualistic and isolated solutions over systemic approaches, and the lack of social and institutional recognition and support for social reproduction, which significantly limits women’s real freedom. This thesis argues that social sustainability is a core element of agricultural and rural development, alongside economic and environmental sustainability, and that development models relying on the subsidisation of women’s labour are never sustainable. More critically, it calls for imagining, deliberating, and exploring broader, alternative, and counter-hegemonic discourses to drive transformative social change for gender equality and justice.