Women engaged and seeking to become involved in innovative agriculture and innovations in rural areas
General public/civic society
Academia and researchers

Possibilities and obstacles for women to innovate

100 innovations were assessed by stakeholders to see what kind of possibilities and obstacles women face in relation to contributing to sustainability innovations.

A set of 100 Innovations were assessed by stakeholders that rated sustainability innovations on a 5-point scale from having extensive obstacles to having extensive possibilities. Results divided these sustainability innovations in two: 53% represented the most promising and easy cases for women to contribute where as 47% were the most difficult cases where women had the most obstacles to contribute.

The results showed that women seemed to have most extensive possibilities to contribute to environmental and social innovations. Where as the most challenging types of innovations to contribute to were political in nature.

Out of the most promising innovations, the ones pertaining to education and local development were seen as having the most possibilities for women to contribute to. Also, renewal of rural image, reform of educational curriculum and adoption of sustainable lifestyles and practices had more possibilities than obstacles.

Challenging political innovations included sustainable farming models, new ways to organise local development and novel organisation of communality.

Research suggests that there are vast differences among various types of sustainability innovations for women to contribute to. Innovations seen as traditionally soft were seen as much more accessible for women than those regarding harder values such as money and power.

In an effort to dig deeper into the findings, an internal group of experts then assessed what strengths and challenges women have. The most common reason for women’s possibilities in rural innovations was their extensive networks. This was followed by women’s good educational background. Another strength was the appreciation of soft and social values.

Constraining factors on the other hand were lack of demand for novel innovations and inequality between genders and social groups. Other obstacles were lack of capital, network, courage and risk taking. The obstacles were clearly more diverse than the possibilities for women.