Sustainable agricultural development depends on female and male smallholders being effective farmers. This includes the ability to access or control resources and make the best decisions possible agro-ecologically, economically, and socially. Traditionally, gendered studies on innovation practice focus on female- versus male-headed households. In this paper, we focus on married women in acknowledged male-headed households and women heading their own households to examine how marital status influences women’s capacity to innovate in their rural livelihoods. Using data from eight community case studies in Ethiopia, we used variable-oriented and contextualized case-oriented analysis to understand factors which promote or constrain women’s innovative capacities. We use Kabeer’s Resources–Agency–Achievements framework to structure our findings. Single women are more likely to own land and experience control over their production decisions and expenditures than married women, but engage in considerable struggle to obtain resources that should be theirs according to the law. Even when land is secured, customary norms often hamper women’s effective use of land and their ability to innovate. Still, some single women do succeed. Married women can innovate successfully provided they are in a collaborative relationship with their husbands. Finally, we find that gender-based violence limits women’s achievements. The article concludes with recommendations.

Local gender norms constitute a critical component of the enabling (or disabling) environment for improved agricultural livelihoods – alongside policies, markets, and other institutional dimensions. Yet, they have been largely ignored in agricultural research for development. This viewpoint is based on many years of experience, including a recent major comparative research initiative, GENNOVATE, on how gender norms and agency interact to shape agricultural change at local levels. The evidence suggests that approaches which engage with normative dimensions of agricultural development and challenge underlying structures of inequality, are required to generate lasting gender-equitable development in agriculture and natural resource management.

Livestock have strong empowerment potential, particularly for women. They offer millions of women in the Global South the opportunity to provide protein-rich foods for home consumption and sale. Livestock provide women with income and opportunities to expand their livelihood portfolios and can strengthen women’s decision-making power. Fully realizing livestock’s empowerment potential for women is necessary for sustainable livestock development. It requires, though, that gender-equitable dynamics and norms are supported in rural communities. We draw on 73 village cases from 13 countries to explore women’s experiences with livestock-based livelihoods and technological innovations. Our analysis follows a gender empowerment framework comprised of four interdependent domains—recognition of women as livestock keepers, access to resources, access to opportunities, and decision making as a cross-cutting domain—which must come together if women are to become empowered through livestock. We find improved livestock breeds and associated innovations, such as fodder choppers or training, to provide significant benefits to women who can access these. This, nonetheless, has accentuated women’s double burdens. Another challenge is that even as women may be recognized in their community as livestock keepers, this recognition is much less common among external institutions. We present a case where this institutional recognition is forthcoming and illuminate the synergetic and empowering pathways unleashed by this as well as the barriers that remain.

The poverty dynamics of a community, and the social arrangements and opportunities that shape these dynamics, constitute important dimensions of well-being. This paper explores local understandings of and experiences with moving out of poverty and with remaining poor by employing the concept of gender norms, or the various social rules that differentiate women’s and men’s roles and conducts in society. The data demonstrate regularities in the influence of restrictive gender norms on understandings of poverty transitions, as well as how these norms are negotiated and bend to accommodate more gender-equitable practices on the ground. Our approach draws on feminist conceptions of gender norms that highlight their fluid and contextual properties, comparative case study methods, and a dataset of 32 village cases from five countries of South Asia. Villagers mainly associate movements out of poverty and chronic poverty with men and their capabilities to expand their earnings and assets despite limited work opportunities. Yet, our evidence from women’s life stories reveals examples from diverse contexts of women who exercise major roles in agriculture and actively work to improve the well-being of their families. However, these experiences rarely alter normative beliefs and practices that entitle men to control women and family resources.

We examine young people’s testimonies about their capacity to make important decisions and their livelihood experiences from agricultural communities that span Pakistan’s countryside. Our analysis is guided by theories of agency that focus on how a young person’s capacity to identify and act on goals is mediated by their local opportunity structure – shaping their household relations, livelihood choices, and prevailing social norms. We apply comparative and contextual qualitative analysis methods to our dataset of 12 village cases, which include 24 sex-specific youth focus groups. We also present a secondary survey analysis. We find high rural employment levels among young men in recent years, and a decline in rural young women’s employment from already low levels. The young study participants mainly observe limited capacity to make important decisions. They repeatedly attribute this to expectations of strict deference to elders and other norms about their gender, young age, junior household position, marital status, and socio-economic standing. They also report negotiating and resisting confining norms; however, young women’s agency appears especially constrained by norms that discourage their physical mobility and visible economic roles. We examine two villages where some youth express healthier levels of agency and more desirable economic opportunities than others, and the significance of kinship relations and fluid norms in this environment. We call for models of young people’s agency that register more effectively the importance of household relations, the gatekeeper role of elders, and the contextual and fluid properties of norms, as these dynamics both constrain and enable young people’s agency.