Journal of Gender, Agriculture and Food Security  Volume 3, Issue 1, 2018. pp54-81 
What drives capacity to innovate? Insights from women and men 
small-scale farmers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America 
 
1 2 1 1 3
Lone Badstue *, Diana E. Lopez , Anya Umantseva , George Williams , Marlène Elias , Cathy Rozel 
4 2,3 5 6 7 1 
Farnworth , Anne Rietveld , Esther Njuguna-Mungai , Joyce Luis , Dina Najjar  and Vongai Kandiwa
 
1
International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, CIMMYT 
2
 Wageningen University & Research 
3
 Bioversity International 
4
 Pandia Consulting, Independent Consultant 
5
 International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT 
6
 International Rice Research Institute, IRRI 
7
 International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, ICARDA 
 
Abstract 
What are key characteristics of rural innovators? How are their experiences similar for women 
and men, and how are they different? To examine these questions, we draw on individual 
interviews with 336 rural women and men known in their communities for trying out new things 
in agriculture. The data form part of 84 GENNOVATE community case studies from 19 
countries. Building on study participants’ own reflections and experiences with innovation in 
their agricultural livelihoods, we combine variable-oriented analysis and analysis of specific 
individuals’ lived experience. Results indicate that factors related to personality and agency are 
what most drive women’s and men’s capacity to innovate. Access to resources is not a 
prerequisite but rather an important enabling aspect. Different types of women have great 
potential for local innovation, but structural inequalities make men better positioned to access 
resources and leverage support. Men’s support is important when women challenge the status 
quo.   
 
Key words:  Capacity to innovate, gender norms, agency and negotiation, personality traits, 
diffusion of innovations 
 
 
Introduction 
Involving diverse segments of the target population in agricultural innovation interventions will 
permit more inclusive and equitable processes and stimulate local innovation and development 
outcomes. This paper provides in-depth knowledge on how the characteristics and experiences of 
individual innovators interlink with the social setting to facilitate or impede innovation. 
  
We consider the capacity of individual women and men to innovate in their rural livelihoods and 
how this is influenced by gender norms and the ability to exercise agency. The analysis draws on 
data from 336 individual interviews with rural women and men known in their communities to 
be “innovative” or “entrepreneurial.” Our objective is to discern patterns across innovators from 
different contexts, while ensuring that our findings remain grounded in real-life experiences. 
Building on study participants’ own reflections on their experiences with innovating in their 
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Journal of Gender, Agriculture and Food Security  Volume 3, Issue 1, 2018. pp54-81 
agricultural livelihoods, we combine variable-oriented and case-oriented analysis of specific 
individual agricultural innovators to examine the questions: What are key characteristics of rural 
innovators? How are the experiences of women and men innovators similar? How are they are 
different? And how does marital status influence this?  The data forms part of 84 community 
i
case studies from 19 countries under the GENNOVATE research initiative , which examines the 
interlinkages between gender norms, agency, and innovation in agriculture and natural resource 
management (NRM). We use Everett Rogers’ (2003 (1962)) three broad categories of individual 
variables related to innovativeness to organize our analysis. Our findings contribute to the 
emergent literature on gender dynamics in rural innovation processes and to the research on 
technology diffusion.  
 
We start out with a brief definition of gender norms, agency, and innovation, and then take stock 
of the literature on the relations between innovation, entrepreneurship, and individual capacity to 
innovate and how this is related to gender and agricultural development. This is followed by a 
section on methods and materials, before we turn to our results on factors that enable individuals’ 
innovation. We present variable-oriented findings and illustrations of how these play out in 
concrete real-life situations, and subsequently discuss capacity to innovate and gender 
dimensions hereof. We conclude the paper by identifying a set of opportunities to consider for 
agricultural research and development.   
 
 
What we know about individual capacity to innovate 
Our perspective is framed by GENNOVATE’s focus on the interlinkages between gender norms, 
agency, and innovation in agriculture and NRM. An overview of how these concepts are 
employed in the GENNOVATE research initiative, and informed the research design, is provided 
by Badstue et al. in the introductory paper of this issue. Briefly put, gender norms refer to the 
socially constituted rules that prescribe men’s and women’s everyday behaviors (Knight and 
Ensminger, 1998). Gender norms are subject to change, constantly being reproduced, contested, 
and negotiated as part of everyday social interaction. Changes in gender norms can furthermore 
occur as a result of socio-economic or political events (e.g. male out-migration or war), and 
changes can also revert back (Locke et al, 2017; Marcus and Harper, 2014). Agency refers to 
“the ability to define one’s goals and act upon them” (Kabeer, 1999, p. 438). The exercise of 
agency can furthermore challenge and, eventually, change the “structures of constraint” 
underlying inequalities (Kabeer, 2010, p. 106). Innovation is a social construct, reflecting and 
resulting from the interplay of different actors, sometimes with conflicting interests and 
objectives, and with different degrees of economic, social, and political power (Berdegué, 2005). 
As described in the first paper of this issue (Badstue et al. 2018), several authors have 
emphasized the contextual embeddedness and complexity of innovation processes and their 
multi-leveled, inter-meshed and evolving nature (e.g. Geels, 2011; Hall, 2007; Klerkx et al., 
2012; Leeuwis, 2013; Schut et al., 2014; Schut et al., 2016). Innovation in rural livelihoods can 
include technical changes in crop or livestock production or produce processing that have been 
introduced by external entities or that local people themselves have developed or adapted, as 
well as processes of institutional change, such as new ways to gain access to resources or to 
organize marketing activities. In this study, innovation does not refer to novelty in absolute 
terms, but rather to people doing something that is different or new for them.  
 
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Journal of Gender, Agriculture and Food Security  Volume 3, Issue 1, 2018. pp54-81 
Structural and individual factors combine to shape women’s and men’s engagement with and 
negotiations of innovation and empowerment (Ahl, 2006; Ahl and Marlow, 2012; Pecis, 2016). 
Recent research on gender and agricultural innovation analyzes the interconnectedness and 
mutual shaping of these concepts (e.g. Bossenbroek and Zwarteveen, 2014; Drew, 2014; 
Padmanabhan, 2002; Pyburn, 2014). As Kingiri (2013) sums it up, capacity to innovate is 
determined by individual skills, actions, and experiences as well as by broader institutional, 
market, policy, and financial domains. A holistic approach to gender-inclusive innovation 
processes therefore requires investment in the empowerment of individual farmers as well as in 
structural change to the systems they live and work in (ibid.; Pyburn, 2014).  
 
Innovation and entrepreneurship have been widely researched from a variety of disciplines, 
including economics, psychology, sociology, and management. While the two concepts are 
closely linked, they have different meanings. Innovation can be considered an outcome of new 
thinking, whereas entrepreneurship is about turning an innovation into a business opportunity, 
and while innovation is based on/requires a passion for inquiry and experiment with creative 
thinking, entrepreneurship requires planning and management skills, and involves risk-taking 
(Kubeczko and Rametsteiner, 2002). In this article, we investigate individuals’ capacity to 
pursue and try out, take up, adapt, or adopt new things in agriculture and rural livelihoods. 
Hence, we are interested in elements related to personality and behavior underlying both of these 
concepts.  
 
In the last decade, innovation and entrepreneurship have been at the core of a fast-growing body 
of literature on processes of change and development (Chambers, 2007; Fressoli et al., 2014; 
Minniti and Naude, 2010; Reynolds et al., 2002; Thompson et al., 2007). As Alsos, Ljunggren, 
and Hytti (2013) observe, while in entrepreneurship research the focus is on entrepreneurs, in the 
innovation research literature the focus is largely on innovation processes and systems, which 
can leave an impression of apparent invisibility of people. As the authors state: “When people 
are not visible in the discourse, gender easily becomes invisible” (p. 3). However, this does not 
mean that gender is irrelevant to the study of innovation. On the contrary, gender is embedded in 
the systems and processes in subtle but impactful ways, and has effects regardless of whether it 
is measured or not (Thorslund and Göransson in Alsos, Ljunggren, and Hytti, 2013). At this 
point, linkages between innovation and entrepreneurship and the broader feminist and gender 
literature have been established, including the recognition that women’s innovation activities 
must be understood in the context of the normative frames and structural factors at play (Alsos, 
Ljunggren, and Hytti, 2013). However, the knowledge base remains limited with regards to how, 
and to what extent, gender norms, agency, and agricultural innovation intersect, as well as the 
role this plays in relation to rural development processes. These considerations are important, as 
a better understanding of the linkages among the three can enable more effective and informed 
design of inclusive, culturally appropriate, and transformative interventions.  
 
A core reference point in relation to the study of the uptake of innovations is Rogers’ seminal 
work on the diffusion of innovations (2003 (1962)), which continues to be one of the most 
influential publications on the topic of how innovations spread. Rogers’ theory is based on his 
synthesis of more than 500 innovation diffusion studies from different disciplines, including 
anthropology, sociology, and education research. A core principle in his framework is that 
diffusion, by definition, must be understood as a social process. Rogers characterizes innovation 
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Journal of Gender, Agriculture and Food Security  Volume 3, Issue 1, 2018. pp54-81 
adopters into five ideal types or categories according to their level of innovativeness, defined as 
“the degree to which an individual (or other unit of adoption) is relatively earlier in adopting new 
ideas than other members of a system” (2003, p. 22).  Rogers’ adopter categories and their core 
features are summarized in Table 1.  
 
Table 1: Adopter categories according to Rogers  
Adopter Core features 
category  
Innovators:  Social relationships outside of local circle of peer networks. Prerequisites 
Key word: include: control of substantial financial resources, ability to understand and 
Venturesome apply complex technical knowledge, ability to cope with high degree of 
uncertainty 
 
Early Focused on and more integrated in local social system compared to 
Adopters:  innovators, high degree of local opinion leadership, others seek them for 
Key word: advice and information, function as local role model. The early adopter is 
Respect respected by his or her peers and is the embodiment of successful, discrete 
use of new ideas. 
 
Early Frequent social interaction with peers but seldom hold position of opinion 
Majority:  leadership; they follow with deliberate willingness in adopting innovations 
Key word: but seldom lead. 
Deliberate 
 
Late Majority: Adopt new ideas just after the average member of a system. Adoption 
Key word: motivation may be both an economic necessity and increasing peer 
Skeptical pressures; innovations are approached with a skeptical and cautious air, and 
not adopted until most others in the system have already done so. The 
weight of system norms must favor an innovation before the late majority is 
convinced to adopt. 
 
Laggards:  No opinion leadership, most “localite” of all the adopter categories, point of 
Key word: reference for the laggard is the past, suspicious of innovations and change 
Traditional agents. The laggard’s precarious economic position forces the individual to 
be extremely cautious in adopting innovations. 
Source: Rogers (2003) 
 
 
Rogers (2003) summarizes individual variables related to innovativeness into three broad 
categories: 1) aspects related to personality traits and behavior patterns (“personality values”); 2) 
communication behavior and social relations (“communication behavior”); and 3) 
socioeconomic characteristics. In the first category, Rogers includes aspects such as open-
mindedness, ability to engage with abstract thinking and cope with uncertainty, rationality, 
ii
aspirations, self-efficacy, and other elements related to people’s perception of agency . The 
second category concerns the nature of a person’s network of social relations and level of 
interconnectedness with the social system, including the degree to which the person is oriented 
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Journal of Gender, Agriculture and Food Security  Volume 3, Issue 1, 2018. pp54-81 
outside of her local social system or inwards towards it. Furthermore, this category concerns 
knowledge and information-seeking behavior, including use of change agent contacts and mass 
media; and the individual’s level of opinion leadership. The third category of socioeconomic 
characteristics relates to level of education and social status, as well as financial and productive 
resources, such as land, livestock, irrigation, and level of financial ability to bear risk.  
Research to understand processes of innovation and innovation diffusion has taken different 
approaches depending on the sector or field of study. For research on capacity to innovate of 
individuals in corporate environments, for instance, the emphasis has often been on the relation 
between personality traits (e.g. self-motivation, commitment, or altruism) and the ability to 
innovate (e.g. Hölzle, Mansfeld, and Gemuenden, 2011; Patterson, Kerrin, and Gatto-Roissard, 
2009). In a number of cases, this has been the focus in relation to research on marketing and 
technology acceptance, as in a 2013 study by Behrenbruch et al. of how emotional stability, 
extraversion and openness, and technology anxiety influence the use of online social networks, 
or Sriyabhand and John’s (2014) study about the role of personality traits in adopting 
information technology.  
 
The relevance of personality traits in relation to innovation and change processes is recognized in 
studies related to business development, entrepreneurship, and organizational change. A number 
of works on women’s entrepreneurship show that strong self-perceived agency can help women 
overcome structural constraints. Jumali (2008) identifies three main constraints for women’s 
entrepreneurship initiatives in developing countries: 1) balancing of work and family life; 2) 
societal attitudes and access to capital; and 3) lack of access to networks and government 
support. However, women overcome these obstacles by deploying their agency. They express 
this through referring to their personality traits such as passion, determination, hard work, 
perseverance, ambition, motivation, responsibility, self-confidence, self-efficacy, and autonomy 
(ibid.). In a study of factors contributing to the success of women agricultural entrepreneurs, 
Narayanan, Singh, and Chahal (2016) find achievement motivation along with general, perceived 
self-efficacy, collective efficacy, proactive attitude, and self-esteem, to be key factors of positive 
influence. Kumar and Bharadwaj (2016) emphasize the importance of self-esteem, confidence, 
and related aspects. They consider poverty as not only the reality people live in, but also a state 
of mind brought about by a variety of deprivations. The authors make a case for the need to 
change this state of mind and promote “novelty-seeking attitude and fervor” to stimulate the 
innovation processes of the poor (p. 76). These points resonate with Zulkosky’s (2009) analysis 
of the concept of “perceived self-efficacy,” which, she finds, facilitates cognitive processes and 
performance, increases motivation, and allows people to approach challenges instead of avoiding 
them. Zulkosky suggests that levels of self-efficacy depend on social experiences: a successfully 
completed task, observing another person doing something successfully, or being verbally 
encouraged help gain a sense of self-efficacy. 
 
Compared to the aforementioned fields, in the field of rural development, research on adoption 
of new agricultural and NRM technologies in the Global South predominantly focuses on 
adoption rates and their correlation with the socioeconomic characteristics of individuals and 
households. These characteristics include farmers’ level of education, age, sex of respondent / 
household head / plot manager, marital status, household size, size of cultivated land, interaction 
with extension services, and so forth (e.g. Adesope et al., 2012; Ali and Erenstein, 2017; 
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Katengeza et al., 2012; Legese et al., 2010; Okwoche and Obinne, 2010; Oluwasusi and Akanni, 
2014).   
 
Overall, there is very little research on the influence of personality aspects, such as motivation 
and grit, on the capacity of farmers to innovate. This study is therefore an important step towards 
filling this research gap and bridging innovation studies across disciplines. More research 
emphasis on personality traits of poor and rural innovators, and how these are gendered, can 
offer valuable insights into innovation processes. Despite the acknowledgment of the important 
role of local institutions in relation to innovation processes, gender relations and gender norms 
remain scarcely treated in the literature on agricultural innovation systems (Pyburn, 2014). 
Combining analysis of socioeconomic factors and personality traits of rural innovators with a 
social-relational and gender perspective helps draw a fuller picture of obstacles to innovation 
success and the ways resource-constrained innovators overcome them. 
 
 
Methods and materials 
We draw on data from 336 individual interviews with rural men and women known in their 
communities to be “innovative” or “entrepreneurial.” The interviews were conducted between 
April 2014 and March 2016 as part of 84 GENNOVATE community case studies across 19 
countries (Table 2). The selection of study communities was based on purposive, maximum 
diversity sampling guided by a 2x2 matrix with four variables: wide gender gaps or narrow 
gender gaps on one axis; and on the other, high or low economic dynamism understood as 
including markets, infrastructure and services, transport and communication, as well as the 
quality of the local natural resource base. The case studies involved the application of seven 
different data collection instruments (see Petesch et al (a). on GENNOVATE’s field 
methodology, elsewhere in this special issue). In this paper, we focus on the individual 
innovation trajectory interviews with two men and two women in each case study community. 
These study participants were recognized by others in their community as doing farming in novel 
ways and as always trying out new things.  
 
Table 2: Spread of community case studies by region and country (84 case study countries) 
Africa (total: 33) Asia (total: 45) Latin America (total: 6) 
Country # case Country # case Country # case 
studies studies studies 
Burundi 1 Afghanistan 4 Mexico 6 
Ethiopia 10 Bangladesh 6   
Malawi 2 India 12   
Morocco 3 Kyrgyzstan 1   
Nigeria 4 Nepal 6   
Rwanda 1 Pakistan 7   
Tanzania 7 Philippines 3   
Uganda 1 Uzbekistan 4   
Zimbabwe 4 Vietnam 2   
 
 
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The purpose of the individual innovation trajectory interviews is to explore individual 
experiences with new agricultural practices or related entrepreneurial initiatives. Questions 
include: How have the interviewees’ thinking in relation to farming practice changed over time? 
What encourages men and women to innovate? How do they learn about and try out, adopt, or 
adapt new things in their farming activities or related entrepreneurial enterprises? How do they 
interact with wider institutional structures to push forward their agendas? And how do they work 
with and around gender norms to develop their projects for change?  
 
Interviews open with an exercise called the Ladder of Power and Freedom, referred to below as 
the “ladder” (For more detail see also Petesch and Bullock, 2018, and for the full collection of 
GENNOVATE data collection instruments, see Petesch et al., (2018a). Interviewees are asked to 
rate on a scale from 1-5 their current ability to make important decisions in their lives, including 
about their working life, starting/maintaining an income-generating activity, their use and control 
of productive resources, and whether to start or end a relationship. A score of 1 represents very 
little decision-making power, while 5 represents the ability to make most major life decisions. 
The interviewee is then asked to think back and locate the step he or she was on 10 years ago and 
to reflect upon the reasons for change. We use the ladder ratings as an indication of the study 
participant’s perceived sense of agency.  
 
Box 1 
 
 
Each innovation trajectory interview followed the same standardized open-ended interview 
protocol in all study communities and countries, which allows for coding and comparison of 
responses across the many different sites and countries. Qualitative analysis of the individual 
narrative transcripts and additional data from the other field research tools from the same case 
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study complement the variable-oriented comparative analysis with contextually informed 
analysis of individual innovators’ experiences.   
 
Sample Overview 
The sample includes 168 men and 168 women innovators, whose key characteristics are listed in 
Table 3. It is worth noting that more women than men were widows, divorced, or single, that 
more men than women identified farming as their primary occupation, and that men innovators 
had more formal education than their female counterparts.  
 
Table 3: Key characteristics of men and women innovators 
 Men innovators Women innovators 
(n=168) (n=168) 
Average age (years) 46 42 
Marital status (% share) 
Married/common law 98% 76% 
Widow/divorced/single 2% 24% 
Relation to household head (% share) 
Household head 86% 21% 
Not household head 14% 79% 
Primary occupation (% share) 
Farming  97% 79% 
Non-agricultural 3% 7% 
Home maker 0% 14% 
Level of education (% share)   
No/incomplete primary 23% 47% 
Primary school 31% 28% 
Secondary school 31% 20% 
University/vocational/technical 15% 5% 
 
 
In terms of innovativeness, the majority of men and women in our sample compare to Rogers’ 
first two categories: “innovators” and “early adopters.” While they were selected precisely for 
being innovative, no distinction between the very first and the first to follow was applied. All 
person and community names that follow are pseudonyms.    
 
 
Factors enabling innovation 
We organize this section according to three dimensions related to individual capacity to innovate 
in agriculture, similar to Rogers’ categories: personality traits, social relations and networks, and 
socioeconomic characteristics. We add to Rogers’ framework by presenting findings on the 
interaction between gender norms, agency, and innovation. As we will demonstrate, gender 
norms influence men’s and women’s ability to try out, adopt, benefit from, and make decisions 
around agricultural innovations. Such norms affect perceptions and have practical implications 
for each of the three analytical categories discussed below. 
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Innovator interviewees were asked to think back across their innovation experience and name 
what they consider the most important factor enabling them to innovate. Several interviewees 
identified more than one and the total is therefore more than 100 percent. The responses are 
categorized in Table 4. 
Table 4:  Frequency of factors cited as most important for ability to innovate (% share) 
 Men innovators Women innovators  
(n=168) (n=168) 
1. Personality traits 41% 36% 
2. Family support 13% 26% 
3. Local networks  15% 11% 
4. Extension services and other external  39% 26% 
Partners 
5. Agricultural/financial resources and inputs  29% 26% 
 
 
Participants’ perceptions about the factors contributing to their innovation capacity mirror the 
three categories related to innovativeness as described by Rogers. Personality traits (factor 1) or 
traits of individual innovators include aspects such as curiosity, determination, and open-
mindedness. Social relations and networks include relationships with family members, other 
community members, such as neighbors or fellow farmers, and relationships with external 
partners, such as extension agents (factors 2, 3, and 4). Finally, socioeconomic characteristics 
concern formal education and financial and productive resources, such as land and inputs (factor 
5).  
 
For the sake of organization and clarity, we will treat each factor separately. However, 
innovation depends on multiple factors and the examples, though under a single heading, often 
illustrate this.  
 
Personality traits and agency 
Across the innovator sample, men and women innovators believe their success to hinge largely 
on particular personality traits. Grit, hard work, self-confidence, curiosity, and risk-taking 
attitude are among the most frequent personal strengths mentioned by innovators.   
 
Overall, 41 percent of men innovators identify these and related personality traits as a 
determining factor for their innovation success, compared with 36 percent of women innovators. 
There is very little difference in how men and women describe these personality traits. The 
majority depict themselves as driven, innovative, risk-taking, and hard-working individuals with 
curiosity and determination to learn new agricultural skills. A 67-year-old man coffee farmer 
from Son, Vietnam relates how “learning, trying to find answers by yourself and the application 
of new agriculture and cultivation techniques have made the initiative of bringing coffee trees 
back successful.” In Ilkhom, Uzbekistan, a 45-year-old wheat and bread innovator attributes her 
innovation success to her “strong motivation and character.” And a 55-year-old woman farmer 
from Bukal, Philippines explains that “willingness to try new things” is what most helped her to 
innovate with improved rice varieties.  
  
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Across our sample, both women and men innovators perceive increased agency over the past 10 
years. In Table 5, we compare the average ladder ratings of the individual innovators with those 
of middle-class men’s and women’s focus groups from the same communities. For both men and 
women, the ratings of the innovator sample are higher than those of the middle-class focus group 
members, both now and 10 years ago.  
 
Table 5: Comparison of agency on the Ladder of Power and Freedom between innovators 
and middle-class focus groups (average ladder step) 
  Men Women 
10 yrs. 10 yrs. 
Now Difference Now Difference 
  ago ago 
Middle-class FGDs     
(n=84 men groups and     
84 women groups) 2.84 3.54 0.70 1.96 3.02 1.08 
 
      
Innovators  
      
(n=168 men and 168 
3.13 4.11 0.98 2.38 3.74 1.36 
women) 
 
 
We also examine the relation between marital status and innovator agency (Table 6). 
  
Table 6: Comparison of current agency level on the Ladder of Power and Freedom 
between married and unmarried innovators (average ladder step) 
  Men innovators (n=168) Women innovators  (n=168) 
Married/Common-law 4.12 3.60 
Widow/Divorce/Single  4.00 4.00 
 
 
Women in conjugal relationships perceive less agency on average than women who are single, 
divorced, or widowed; whereas this is slightly the opposite for men. This may indicate that 
traditional norms around marital roles continue to limit women’s ability to participate in 
decision-making and exercise agency, including around agricultural innovations. As one 45-year-
old married woman farmer and small-scale trader from Wariso, Ethiopia, describes:  
Now I’m on step 3 because I can make my own decision on particular issues that need my 
participation such as on everyday life. But the major decisions are still his, and he is 
responsible and controls major issues.  
In several cases, single, divorced, or widowed women innovators describe how their status as 
household heads means they now make decisions previously taken by their husbands. According 
to a 43-year-old farmer from Mogorowi, Tanzania, who separated from her husband and moved 
from step 2 to 5 on the ladder:  
During that time most of the decisions were being made by my husband. Every little 
decision I used to make was undermined by the husband. Today I can make full decisions. 
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I can say I will plant one acre or two acres. Planning in the absence of the husband is 
better.  
The following three examples of agricultural innovators demonstrate the perceived importance of 
personality traits and agency to innovation capacity.  
 
Individual stories, Part I 
Danai is a 38-year-old married mother of four from Mikita, Zimbabwe, who successfully 
adopted conservation agriculture (CA) related practices on her maize field. Gender norms in 
Mikita, a farming village of 1,762 households, have become less restrictive over the last 10 
years. As a result, women farmers like Danai are now increasingly able to access farmer 
trainings, agricultural innovations, and job opportunities. Danai attributes her innovation success 
to strong support from family, extension, and local networks, and most of all to her strong will 
and desire to escape poverty.  
 
For me it was determination and seeing how wealthy other people around me were. I can 
tell you that I was so insignificant to the point that I was only invited to family events to 
fetch water and do all the heavy work. 
 
When Danai first applied CA-related practices on her plot, her family and neighbors mocked and 
discouraged her because it was not a common practice in the village. The hard labor also 
challenged her. “There are times when the work is so painful that I wished somebody would 
invent an automatic hoe which is remote controlled,” she says jokingly.   
 
Danai enumerates a long list of positive changes resulting from CA: she bought cattle, built her 
own house, received a “Master Farmer Certificate,” and paid for her husband to attend “building 
school.” Through her initiative and achievements, Danai earned respect from her husband and 
family:  
 
Now my voice can be heard in this house, and I can make important decisions. I am the 
one who went for Conservation Agriculture training, and I am the one who does most of 
the work. My husband mainly helps me in terms of money to purchase the inputs.  
 
She credits her current high agency (step 4) to her economic contributions to the household and 
increased decision-making:  
 
I perform different jobs that give me money. So I could now earn money as an individual, 
and this also gave me more power to make decisions. I am now able to buy what I want 
for myself. My husband now allows me to make more decisions because we work well 
together, and he also appreciates the progress that I have made. 
 
Tara is a 44-year-old married woman with two sons in their mid-twenties, from Ranagar, a 
village of about 1,100 inhabitants located in central Nepal. Like Danai, Tara is a successful 
woman innovator who has benefited from the fact that gender norms in her community have 
become less restrictive over the last 10 years. This has increased women’s physical mobility, 
economic independence, and decision-making power. High male out-migration rates have 
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accelerated these changes, and women increasingly carry out the agricultural and economic roles 
previously associated with men. Her capacity to innovate was facilitated by a combination of 
factors, including support from extension, local, and family networks; high agency and particular 
personality traits; and changes in local gender norms.  
 
Tara describes herself as curious and eager to try new things. After learning about row planting 
with improved maize seeds at an extension event, she adopted the practice on her farmland and 
saw immediate results. While describing local maize as tastier, Tara reports that the improved 
maize varieties resist storms and heavy rains and increase her crop yields by one-third. Most 
importantly, they guarantee her family’s food security and raise the economic condition of the 
household as Tara is able to sell the surplus crop for a profit. She credits her thriving 
agribusiness with being able to send her sons to university. Tara has gained the respect of fellow 
farmers, who see her as an influential role model: “Now village people come to me and adopt my 
way of growing maize.”  
 
Tara considers that she has climbed from step 2 to 5 on the Ladder of Power and Freedom. She 
attributes this to the change in Ranagar towards less restrictive gender norms and the opportunity 
to participate in trainings about agriculture, gender, and leadership.  
 
Now we [women] can go to join meetings, trainings, excursions [organized by the local 
agricultural office]. But earlier, our husbands used to get angry if we went out.  
 
She observes that her relationship with her husband has improved:  
 
Now everything is going smoothly. But in the beginning my husband used to get angry 
whenever I wanted to participate in trainings and meetings. After getting gender training 
from Heifer International, he has changed a lot. Now, he reminds me to go for a course if 
I forget. 
 
In both Danai’s and Tara’s cases, favorable gender norms facilitate their ability to exercise 
agency and learn about, adopt, and benefit from agricultural innovations. In several cases, men 
innovators’ understanding of their level of power and freedom is rooted in how well they fulfill 
their gender-ascribed roles as economic providers and household heads. For an example of this, 
we turn to the story of Chichi, whose privileged position as a male household head facilitates his 
access to agricultural knowledge and bolsters his decision-making and innovation capacity.  
 
Chichi is a 57-year-old farmer and father of three from Karanga, a village in Tanzania, where 
patrilineal family systems place men as the primary household decision-makers. Chichi began 
innovating with improved groundnut varieties and management practices after hearing about 
groundnut farming on the radio. He traveled outside the village to learn from successful 
groundnuts farmers. “What is needed is commitment and not being afraid to try new techniques,” 
he explains. “Advice and information from the extension officer is important.” Today, Chichi is 
an influential farmer. “Many people come to me for advice regarding agriculture. I think this is 
because they have seen that I have become successful.” According to Chichi, what most helped 
him was “not giving up, trying a new approach.” 
 
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Chichi explains his upward move on the Ladder of Power and Freedom:  
 
I am rating myself on step 5 today because I am the head of the household, therefore I am 
free to make whatever decision I want. . . . You know, the decisions in the family are 
made by a man, otherwise everything will go wrong. Even if it is her plot, if anything 
goes wrong, you, the man will be blamed. So, I keep on making decisions, even though 
sometimes we discuss together. 
 
In his gender-ascribed role, Chichi is responsible for the wellbeing and food security of his 
family. Attaining good results with groundnuts and generating income validates his ability as 
economic provider and his status as a man in the community:  
 
Increased crop yield is the most significant. It helped me earn a lot of money and my 
family advanced. I paid the children’s school fees and developed our restaurant; I have 
peace in my family because we have food. I am seen as a good father of the family. 
 
 
Social relations and capacity to innovate 
Social relations and networks play an important role for men’s and women’s abilities to access 
information and support, as indicated in Table 4. However, there are differences in the way men 
and women innovators perceive and reflect upon various types of social relations and support 
networks. The main distinctions concentrate around the importance of family support, and the 
quality or nature of the interactions with external partners. After a brief overview of these 
aspects, we again turn to a set of concrete examples that illustrate men’s and women’s different 
experiences in these regards.  
Family support 
More women than men innovators emphasize family support. Overall, just 13 percent of men 
identify family support as one of the most important factors in their capacity to innovate. Across 
the 168 innovation trajectory interviews, only seven men mention support from their wives as an 
important factor. In comparison, 26 percent or 44 women innovators refer to family support as 
important for their innovation experience (Table 4).  
 
To the question of how innovators first learned about the new practice/technology/way of 
organizing, 18 percent of women respondents point to family members, compared to just six 
percent of the men. When asked if someone encouraged them to try out the innovation, 32 
percent of women mention family members, compared to only seven percent of men (Table 7).  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Table 7: Sources of information and encouragement for men and women innovators (% 
share) 
 First source of Who (if anyone) Possible source of 
information encouraged additional 
them? information or 
material support? 
 Men Women Men Women Men Women 
(n=168) (n=168) (n=168) (n=168) (n=168) (n=168) 
Extension and other external       
partners 58% 42% 53% 26% 65% 49% 
Local networks 22% 24% 18% 16% 10% 12% 
Family members 6% 18% 7% 32% 0% 5% 
No one/ self-motivation 2% 5% 8% 11% 5% 11% 
Mixed 10% 10% 13% 15% 19% 21% 
NA 2% 1% 0% 1% 1% 1% 
 
 
Unlike the men, women innovators offer detailed explanations of how support of husbands, 
parents, siblings, in-laws, or children helps them take up new farming techniques or otherwise 
innovate in their rural livelihoods. Notably, the family support most frequently emphasized by 
married women innovators is that of their husbands, including, for example, emotional and 
financial support, sharing childcare responsibilities, or even standing up for their wife against 
unsupportive relatives.  
 
Local networks 
The importance of social networks and collective action is highlighted in the gender literature in 
relation to women’s empowerment (e.g. Agarwal, 2000; Bali Swain and Wallentin, 2012; 
Ibrahim and Alkire, 2007; Kabeer, 2001; Malhotra and Schuler 2005; Weber, 2007), and 
throughout the interviews both women and men study participants make reference to group 
membership or exchanges of information and various types of mutual help with other community 
members.  
 
On several occasions, women and men innovators express high appreciation for the advice and 
help they receive from fellow farmers. When discussing local networks, men innovators typically 
reflect on learning and receiving technical advice from other men farmers who encourage them 
to try out an innovation. As a 30-year-old man farmer from Ethiopia shares: 
 
I would like to mention the support and encouragement of [my friend] Ato Bedelu who 
consistently makes me hope to see the future and gave me chickpea seeds to try out for 
free. 
 
And according to a 52-year-old man farmer from Lan, Vietnam, “I continuously learn from 
others and apply suitable technical advances for effective production.” Women mention 
interacting with people in their community, e.g. neighbors and experienced farmers. For 
instance, Elsa, a 34-year-old rice farmer from Agham, Philippines, shares that when she has a 
question about high-yield rice varieties, she seeks the advice of farmers who have earlier tried 
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planting the variety. Similarly, Shan, a 45-year-old mother of three from Ganga, India, who 
adopted use of rotavator, a machine for land preparation, saw this machine on her neighbor’s plot 
and was curious about it. The neighbor agreed to lend her the rotavator so she could try it out 
herself, and later another neighbor lent her money for farm inputs. She states that “my neighbors 
were my biggest help.” Nonetheless, local networks are only the fourth and fifth most frequently 
mentioned factors by men and women, respectively (Table 4).  
External partners 
Our data support that external partners, including extension, play an important role for both 
men’s and women’s capacity to innovate. However, there are large differences in the way 
women and men refer to their experiences with these entities. Men innovators are much more 
familiar and used to interacting with external partners than women in the sample: 39 percent of 
men innovators describe interactions with extension services as significant to their innovation 
success, compared to 26 percent of women respondents (Table 4). More men than women first 
learned about the new practice/technology/way of organizing from extension services, and the 
number of men who report receiving encouragement from extension services is more than double 
that of women (Table 7). Similarly, 65 percent of men identify external partners as a source of 
additional information or material support, compared to 49 percent of the women innovators. 
While considerably less than the men, the fact that half of the women in the sample consider 
external partners as a possible source of additional support speaks to the importance of external 
contacts for women’s innovation.  
A qualitative analysis of men’s and women’s responses about the importance of extension 
services indicates a difference in the type and quality of their interactions with external partners. 
In about half of the responses to the question about the most important factors to innovation 
success, men innovators mentioning extension reference the (good) quality of their relationships 
with extension agents or external partner representatives, including how this strengthens their 
confidence and decision-making capacity (30 out of 62); in contrast, very few women innovators 
describe the quality of their relationships with extension agents (eight out of 45). Instead, the 
majority of women innovators’ responses emphasize the importance of simply having access to 
new knowledge or training (33 out of 45, compared to 27 out of 62 for the men).  
 
Table 8: Relationship between women innovators’ marital status and their initial source of 
information about innovation (% share) 
Married/common law Single/divorced/widow  
  (n=128) (n=40)  
External partners  39% 50%  
 
Local networks 27% 15% 
 
Family members 17% 20% 
 
No one /self-motivation 7% 0% 
 
Mixed  9% 15% 
 
NA 2% 0%  
 
It is likely that gender-related constraints, for instance with regards to (married) women’s 
physical mobility or their communication with men outside the family, affect women’s ability to 
establish more regular interaction and relationships with extension services, or how they frame 
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this when speaking about it. The data indicate that women who head their households (widows, 
divorced, and single women) more frequently acquire information from external partners than 
women in conjugal relationships (Table 8). 
 
As illustrated in the following examples, innovators often seek relationships outside their local 
networks and establish what might be considered “weak ties” with external actors (Granovetter, 
1983). 
 
Individual stories, Part II 
The following stories demonstrate the shifting, multi-faceted relationships between support 
networks and other structural and individual elements that make rural innovation possible in real-
life contexts. The innovation experiences of Bilha from Ethiopia and Samuel from Tanzania 
demonstrate how gendered social networks are intertwined with access to financial resources and 
individuals’ ability to negotiate room for maneuver to take their projects forward.  
 
The story of Bilha, a 27-year-old mother of two from Saina, a village in Ethiopia, demonstrates 
how husbands’ support can facilitate women’s agency and decision-making. In Saina, farmers 
grow wheat, teff, beans, and chickpeas. Early on in her marriage, Bilha lived according to 
community norms in which women are mainly expected to support their husbands and take care 
of household tasks. Later on, however, she decided to start a business selling local brew in her 
village, and her family accepted this. Bilha began earning money and things began to change. 
She explains: 
 
After I started my own business, I earned income and could participate in major 
decisions in our life. At the same time, I got the chance to participate in trainings and 
meetings that increased my knowledge and skill on farming. My husband recognized my 
contribution to our improvement over time. 
 
After attending a workshop on chickpea farming organized by the national agricultural research 
organization, Bilha decided to start cultivating chickpeas. The local extension department 
introduced Bilha and her husband to a model farmer (man) within their region, who agreed to 
provide them with 25 kg of chickpea seed as a loan. They rented 0.25 acre and planted the 
chickpeas. After their first crop failed, her husband was ready to give up, but Bilha insisted on 
trying again. She replanted late in the season and harvested five quintals (about 500 kilos). From 
this she repaid the seed loan, kept some for food and for seed, and sold the difference. The 
following season, the couple rented a bigger plot and harvested 16 quintals. 
 
Bilha explains how, at first, the community did not approve of her attending meetings outside of 
the homestead without her husband. His support and encouragement gave her the strength and 
confidence to persist and move ahead, despite the criticism and pressure to conform. Over time, 
iii
Bilha has become the woman representative in the woreda . She is proud that her initiative 
improved her family’s welfare: they built a bigger house and their children can now dress well 
and go to school comfortably.  
 
There are several narratives similar to Bilha’s in which husbands’ openness and support facilitate 
women’s ability to innovate. Yet, some people hold on to more traditional gender views. This 
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was certainly the case for Chichi, the groundnut farmer from Tanzania, and likewise for Samuel, 
also from Tanzania, whose story we turn to next.  
 
Samuel is a 45-year-old married farmer and father of three who adopted improved maize. He 
lives in Mogorowi, a community of about 2,300 people characterized by fluid, slowly changing 
gender norms. Though men in Mogorowi are better positioned to take advantage of agricultural 
innovations, women increasingly find outlets for strengthening their livelihoods. Both men and 
women farmers cultivate improved maize and rice and raise livestock, and some grow vegetables 
for sale. Very skeptical of women’s economic independence, Samuel faces the burden of 
providing for the household largely on his own. 
 
Samuel shares how his determination to improve his family’s economic condition led him to start 
a brickmaking business. Brickmaking gave him sufficient income to build a new house and to 
rent land and try out new cultivation practices with improved maize. According to Samuel: 
 
What has helped me most is being closer to the agricultural extension agents who 
continue helping me. In case of any problem, I turn to them for help. 
  
With good maize harvests, Samuel has been able to ensure his family’s food security and 
economic wellbeing. He continues to interact closely with local extension agents and recently 
expanded into livestock activities. However, rental costs for land are rising, so he and his wife 
farm far away from their home where renting is more affordable. This means Samuel relies on 
his children to manage the livestock.  
 
The pressure that Samuel shoulders to provide for his family is exacerbated by his traditional 
view of gender roles. For example, Samuel farms alongside his wife—not permitting her to plant 
and sell crops individually—because if “women sell and get money on their own, they normally 
become a problem to their husbands.” Yet, while Samuel attempts to limit his wife’s economic 
agency, he claims a shift towards more cooperative decision-making in economic and household 
matters: 
 
I can say that the way decisions are made has greatly changed. Before I attended the 
seminar, I did not know that we needed to have cooperation as a family in decision-
making. This has brought great change, and now we decide together.  
 
These seemingly conflicting statements may indicate a growing recognition of the value of 
cooperation and jointness. Though there are no assurances, with time Samuel’s attitude towards 
women’s economic roles could evolve as well.  
 
Many quotes by women innovators allude to expectations of deference of married women to 
their husbands. As our final story illustrates, single, widowed, and separated women sometimes 
find it easier to engage with extension workers and make decisions around agricultural 
innovations.   
 
Celestine is a 49-year-old widow with eight children from Nirama, Rwanda.  Development and 
extension programs began arriving in Nirama in the 2000s. Today, villagers have access to 
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microcredits, technical schools, social assistance, and trainings on improved seeds and fertilizer 
application.  
 
Celestine’s decision to adopt improved maize varieties increased her economic stability, food 
security, and self-confidence. It also gave her a newfound respect within the community:  
 
I used to be a nobody. Now I am knowledgeable and everyone recognizes my opinion in 
the community and beyond. I can go to the mayor’s office or even the Minister if I have 
something I want to tell them. All this is because of my activity growing improved maize!  
  
Celestine learned about improved maize varieties from an agronomist who later helped her and 
other farmers acquire seeds, maize-shelling machines, and other farming inputs. Celestine’s 
status as a widow and household head meant that she was less constrained by certain gender 
norms that tend to limit married, or young, women’s access to meetings, trainings, and other 
public interactions. The presence of good agricultural advisory services, combined with 
Celestine’s dedication and eagerness to try out new things, made her innovation experience very 
positive. 
 
Despite disapproval and skepticism from family members, Celestine remained optimistic and 
persisted to try out new maize varieties: 
 
They would ask me why I am so enthusiastic about maize and what makes me feel so 
confident about the maize. I told them that I am hopeful that one day I will renovate my 
house and make it modern. I will even buy a television because of maize!  
 
Many family members and neighbors have since adopted the practice following her example. 
 
Socioeconomic characteristics: financial and productive resources  
In his categorization of innovation adopters, Rogers (2003) places great importance on 
socioeconomic characteristics and closely relates education level and possession of financial and 
productive resources to capacity to innovate, going so far as to consider these as prerequisites for 
innovation. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that these are not the only elements that shape 
innovation processes: “Although wealth and innovativeness are highly related, economic factors 
do not offer a complete explanation of innovative behavior (or even approach doing so)”. He 
emphasizes “Although agricultural innovators tend to be wealthy, there are many rich farmers 
who are not innovators” (p. 289). From this study we can add that there are numerous examples 
of successful innovators who started with very few financial and productive resources.  
Financial and productive resources and inputs 
Men and women innovators in our study place considerable weight on being able to access the 
necessary resources for their projects. Overall, 29 percent of men and 26 percent of women in the 
sample mention access to productive or financial resources and farm inputs as one of the most 
important factors for their capacity to innovate (see Table 4).  
 
The testimonies presented above reflect the importance of resources as well as how people 
negotiated the challenge of not having certain resources. Bilha and her husband did not have land 
of their own, and Samuel had just 0.2 ha. In both cases, they first had to find a way of generating 
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resources with which to access land; in Bilha’s case it was brewing and selling drinks, and in 
Samuel’s it was making and selling bricks. Tara, on the other hand, had access to land but still 
needed to invest in improved maize seed. She explained the big difference it made that she was 
able to acquire the seed she needed at a 33 percent discount through her membership in a 
women’s farmer group,. Tran, a 26-year-old married mother of two from Lan, a village in 
Vietnam, talks about how money borrowed from her in-laws helped her start rearing pigs:  
 
Yes, when [we] first moved out I borrowed seven million (about $300 USD) with 1.5 
percent interest from my parents-in-law to grow maize; after selling maize I used that 
money to raise pigs.  
 
The majority of the interviewees have access to land: 97 percent of the men and 81 percent of the 
women. However, although they share similar views with regards to the importance of being able 
to access productive resources, access to and control over land differs considerably between 
women and men, as shown in Table 9.  
 
Table 9: Land ownership (% share) 
Men innovators Women innovators 
  (n=168) (n=168) 
Together with spouse or other family member(s) 50% 39% 
Self 42% 18% 
Spouse or other family member(s) 5% 23% 
Other 3% 19% 
 
The information on land size is incomplete and only available for 109 (or 65 percent) of the 
women, and 125 (or 74 percent) of the men in the sample (Table 10). However, based on these 
numbers more than a quarter of the men and half the women innovators report total household 
land holdings of less than 1 ha. 
 
Table 10: Household land size for men and women innovators 
Men  innovators Women innovators 
 Land size (ha) (n=125) (n=109) 
<1 34 (27%) 55 (50%) 
1 - 2.99 42 (34%) 29 (27%) 
3 - 4.99 17 (14%) 15 (14%) 
5 - 9.99 16 (13%) 7 (6%) 
> 9.99 16 (13%) 3 (3%) 
 
Bilha and her husband managed to rent a plot with money from her brewing. They could not pay 
for the chickpeas seed, but negotiated the seed acquisition as a loan to be paid back after harvest. 
Access to information and creative negotiation with other people compensated for their financial 
and land-resource limitations. Similarly, Celestine relates that access to information is more 
important for innovation adoption than financial resources:  
 
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I don’t really need money. I think training and capacity building in other areas of 
development would be more helpful.  
 
Educational status 
Examining the relationship between innovators’ perceived agency and their level of education 
(see Table 11), we find that across different levels of education, men innovators report higher 
levels of agency than their women counterparts. The level of agency among the innovators 
interviewed is higher for those who completed primary school or more, compared to those with 
no or incomplete primary education. Yet, for both men and women innovators, even in the 
lowest educational category of no or incomplete primary school, the average levels of perceived 
agency are relatively high, greater than 3.62. Overall, the data do not indicate that higher 
education is accompanied by a higher sense of perceived agency.  
 
Table 11: Education level/average step on Ladder of Power and Freedom 
Men innovators Women innovators 
  (n=168) (n=168) 
No/incomplete primary 3.92 3.62 
Primary school 4.19 3.85 
Secondary school 4.15 3.91 
University/vocational/technical 4.16 3.57 
 
 
Capacity to innovate from a gender perspective 
The innovators in the study identified important enabling factors which can be grouped in 
alignment with Rogers’ three categories of variables related to individual innovativeness: 
personality traits, social relations, and socioeconomic characteristics. A gender perspective 
allows us to consider the extent to which individual capacity to innovate is influenced by gender 
norms, and in the following we discuss this in relation to each of the three categories.   
 
While we structure the discussion around these three categories and treat them separately, it is 
important to stress that successful innovation is mostly a result of multiple factors. In some 
cases, there are synergies among factors, while in others, individuals skillfully weave together 
various elements from the three categories and the specific context to overcome challenges 
related to physical or financial resources, information, or, indeed, the normative context. The one 
factor that seems to be universally present across the women and men innovators in our dataset is 
strong personal drive, and we start the discussion with that.  
 
Personality traits 
Despite their many different contexts, the innovators in our dataset have a number of similar 
personality traits in common: they are open-minded, determined, aspirational, and willing to take 
on uncertainty; and their ratings on the Ladder of Power and Freedom are higher than those of 
other groups in the case studies (Table 5). Based on their own testimonies, it is their curiosity, 
grit, and intentionality that drive them forward in search of new knowledge and different types of 
support to facilitate their projects, and which spur them to seek alternative ways of negotiating 
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challenges. These are elements that facilitate capacity to exercise agency, and our data show little 
difference in the way men and women innovators speak about these factors.   
 
We have analyzed data on agricultural innovators’ experiences, and found that the 
aforementioned personality traits appear to favor individual capacity to innovate. However, due 
to our focus on successful innovators, our data do not allow for conclusions regarding other 
groups, e.g. those that do not innovate or tend to adopt late; nor how the development of such 
traits can be stimulated, or how individuals who have them can be identified. These are topics 
that require further investigation.  
 
Social relations and networks 
Except when it happens accidentally, innovation is about purposely doing something differently, 
which requires agency. In addition, innovation potentially challenges local views of how things 
should be done or by whom. Depending on the context, the potential consequences of 
challenging local norms can be more than an individual is able or willing to face. By extension, 
normative dimensions, including those related to gender, can affect people’s capacity to 
innovate.  
 
However, as our findings show, it is a characteristic of innovators that they do not shy away from 
challenge. Many of them are adept at moving skillfully on the border between resistance and 
conformity. Women’s efforts to innovate in their agricultural activities often challenge local 
norms for appropriate behavior for (married) women, and many of the women participants speak 
about facing harsh criticisms from other family or community members. In this situation, several 
of the married women created room for maneuver for their innovation endeavors by explicitly 
subscribing to certain gender norms, for example those accentuating deference to the power of 
the male household head. Thus by deliberately playing into what is expected of a good wife in 
other respects, an impression of conformity is maintained. These findings are congruent with the 
literature, (e.g. Cornwall and Edwards, 2010; Beck 2009), on the need for women, in some 
situations, to subscribe to certain societal expectations in order to acquire certain freedoms.  
 
Economic gain from an innovation is often a key turning point for both women and men 
innovators in terms of gaining buy-in from the spouse and other family members, and for women 
furthermore in terms of gaining respect from the husband and increasing participation in decision 
making, as in the cases of Danai, Tara, and Bilha (see also Locke et al., 2017).  
 
Spousal support appears to be particularly important for women. When women innovators can 
count on support from their husbands, it helps them withstand the criticism and the social 
pressure to conform, and reduces the risk of tension in the household. And this in turn facilitates 
individual capacity to innovate, as also described by Locke et al. (2017). For these same reasons, 
relaxation of norms around women’s physical mobility, economic agency, and decision making 
can be game-changing. This underscores the importance of working with men and boys, as well 
as women and girls, and of fostering the support of husbands and local opinion leaders to 
strengthen women’s capacity to innovate. In relation to this, it is worth noting the effects of 
gender awareness trainings referred to by several men and women in our dataset as something 
that contributes to nurturing cooperation and support among spouses, including in Tara’s and 
Samuel’s stories above.  
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Our findings related to external and local networks are in line with Rogers’ framework, 
according to which those with the highest levels of innovativeness are oriented towards the 
external environment and often form social relationships outside their local circle of peers. For 
Rogers, this “frees the innovator from the constraints of the local system and allows him or her 
the personal freedom to try out previously untried new ideas” (2003, p. 291). This aligns with 
Granovetter’s (1983) arguments regarding the strength of weak ties, which play a key role in 
establishing access to exotic ideas, information, and technologies, e.g. new crop varieties or 
agronomic practices, and bringing these into the local system. In the context of this study, 
examples of such weak ties would include Bilha’s connection with the model farmer elsewhere 
in the region, who provided her with improved chickpea seed; or the extension agents in 
Samuel’s and Celestine’s stories, as well as other external rural development partners, business 
people, or personal acquaintances in other innovators’ cases.  
 
The qualitative and numerical findings presented in Tables 4 and 7 draw attention to gender 
disparities in access to extension, a problem which is well documented in the literature (e.g. FAO 
and IFAD, 2009; Meinzen-Dick et al., 2012; Peterman, Behrman, and Quisumbing, 2014;) but 
which requires greater attention in policy and agricultural research for development. Our 
findings furthermore indicate differences in the type and quality of the interactions with external 
partners. Men appear to be better positioned to access and cultivate relations with extension 
personnel and other external entities, which resonates with previous studies (e.g. Moore et al., 
2001). While our data do not include details on the approaches and procedures of extension and 
other external partners in the case study communities, the differences highlighted in Table 7 
could indicate that extension and other external partners tend to service and support men 
innovators more and better than women innovators. This is likely the result of the reproduction 
of dominant gender norms and related assumptions and stereotypes in the broader institutional 
context, including extension and other external entities.  
 
Despite these challenges, 49 percent of the women innovators in our study consider external 
partners as an important enabling factor and a possible source of further information and support 
(Table 7). This is an encouraging finding which suggests that despite the less intense and 
sustained interaction with extension agents, women innovators appreciate access to new 
knowledge and learning, and due to the scarcity, possibly even more so than men. Gender norms 
in many places can make it seem more challenging for planned interventions to reach women, 
but our findings support that it is well worth the effort, and a more fine-grained understanding of 
gender norms and agency will allow us to further engage in this.  
 
Resources  
Rogers’ framework associates the most innovative people with educational and social status and 
control of financial and productive resources. Conversely, lack of the same is associated with the 
least innovative individuals. While we acknowledge that poverty can hold people back from 
innovating, e.g. because they cannot afford the basic inputs to implement innovation, we find 
that this is not always the case, and that particular resource endowments—financial or 
otherwise—are a not a prerequisite for capacity to innovate. Our dataset is very diverse with 
regards to study participants’ land ownership, education, and access to financial or agricultural 
inputs. We find that some people innovate possibly because they are poor and have little to lose, 
as in the case of Danai, for example, who describes her poverty as her main motivation.  
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Notwithstanding, having financial and productive resources can be helpful or even required, as 
may be the case for education. Access to resources should therefore be considered an important 
enabling aspect in relation to capacity to innovate. Facilitating access to resources for those who 
have little would therefore be an important investment area for those concerned with scaling out 
agricultural innovations. This should include alternative financing mechanisms and rethinking 
the role of subsidies for the resource constrained, as in the case of Tara, who was able to try out 
improved maize when she qualified for a discount.  
 
Single women/widows sometimes face less of the social norm constraints that apply to married 
women, and may in some ways perceive more sense of freedom and power to make decisions on 
certain things than many married women (Table 6). However, widows and single women can 
sometimes be more resource constrained than married people. Yet, in some cases, their 
motivation and increased ability to exercise agency may more than compensate for their financial 
or physical resource constraints. This represents an opportunity for initiatives interested in 
stimulating women’s innovation. 
 
Overall, men and women rural innovators point to factors related to personality and agency as 
being the most important in relation to capacity to innovate. The view that financial or 
productive resources are a prerequisite for capacity to innovate has led to a strong focus on 
socioeconomic variables in agricultural research for development, and relative underinvestment 
in other dimensions influencing capacity to innovate, most particularly the role and nature of 
agency and the interlinkages to social norms and social relations. While these dimensions may 
seem more challenging to tackle or measure, our findings show that they cannot be overlooked in 
efforts to scale out agricultural innovations. Rogers refers to the tendency of focusing on farmers 
with resources, education, and extensive social networks as “the innovativeness/needs paradox 
and the strategy of least resistance” (2003, p. 295), and he points out how this sometimes leads to 
widening socioeconomic gaps rather than helping the ones who most need innovation.  
 
 
Conclusions  
According to our findings key characteristics of rural innovators include personality traits related 
to open-mindedness, intentionality and resourcefulness, willingness to take on uncertainty and 
relatively high levels of agency. Often this is combined with the formation of social relationships 
with people outside their immediate circle of local peers. Men are often better positioned to take 
advantage of innovation opportunities than women, and women innovators more often than men 
face criticisms for challenging local gender norms, especially if married. Spousal support is 
therefore particularly important for (married) women innovators. While often more resource 
constrained than married people, single women or widows sometimes experience more freedom 
and power in certain regards than married women.  
 
Innovation requires multiple factors to come together, including aspects related to personality 
traits, social networks, and other resources. Initiatives should consider all these dimensions when 
selecting approaches for enabling and stimulating innovation. Focusing primarily on better 
educated, relatively well-off, male farmers is a limiting perspective that not only reinforces 
existing inequality, but also leaves most of the innovation potential untapped. The exact 
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Journal of Gender, Agriculture and Food Security  Volume 3, Issue 1, 2018. pp54-81 
approach should be adapted to the specific context; however, here we identify some 
opportunities to consider:  
 Targeting regions/areas where the normative or institutional context is (becoming) 
encouraging for both women and men to innovate, and where agricultural advisory 
services and other elements in the local opportunity space, e.g. micro-finance and subsidy 
programs, are equally supportive of poor women and men. As we have demonstrated, the 
more tolerant and non-restrictive the normative context, the greater possibility that 
women can build and activate their capacity to innovate. Further research is needed to 
develop methods for assessing institutional environments, as well as for leveraging 
personality traits that favor innovation.  
 Caution should be exercised in focusing on resource-strong farmers. We find encouraging 
examples of agricultural innovators who lacked basic financial or physical resources, but 
who found ways of overcoming these challenges. More attention should be directed to 
supporting resource-constrained potential innovators to negotiate such challenges, e.g. 
through building and leveraging social relations, subsidy arrangements, and rental or 
collaborative arrangements.  
 Rethinking gender awareness training with communities and R&D partners, including 
community leaders, as a central axle in strategies for agricultural development and 
poverty reduction. As our findings indicate, achieving husbands’ acceptance and support 
is key for married women’s ability to innovate. Gender-transformative approaches can 
support women and men to develop shared visions for their lives, and to work together to 
overcome gender barriers to innovation (see Farnworth et al., forthcoming).  
 Depending on the circumstances, women heading their households are sometimes better 
positioned than other women for engaging with agricultural innovation. Single women 
and widows represent an area of opportunity for agricultural R&D, as potential role 
models and vehicles for opening space for more women. 
 
Acknowledgments  
This paper draws on data collected as part of GENNOVATE case studies funded by the CGIAR 
Research Programs on Wheat, Maize, Grain Legumes, Humidtropics and Rice, as well as RTB 
(Roots, Tubers and Bananas), A4NH (Agriculture for Nutrition and Health) and FTA (Forests, 
Trees and Agroforestry). Development of research design and field methodology was supported 
by the CGIAR Gender & Agricultural Research Network, the World Bank, the governments of 
Mexico and Germany, and the CGIAR Research Programs on Wheat and Maize. Data analysis 
was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The authors wish to thank the women 
and men farmers who participated in this research, as well as the local data collection teams in 
each of the study countries. Two competent teams led by Diana E Lopez in Mexico and Lucila 
Rozas Urrunaga in Peru coded the case studies.  A special thank you also goes to our two 
anonymous reviewers who provided valuable feedback.  The views expressed in the article are 
those of the authors and not of any organization. 
 
 
 
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Endnotes 
                                                          
i
 GENNOVATE, or “Enabling Gender Equality in Agricultural and Environmental Innovation” 
is a qualitative, comparative, and collaborative research initiative on gender norms, agency, 
and agricultural innovation involving 137 case studies across 26 countries and drawing on the 
voices and lived experiences of over 7000 rural women, men, and youth of different 
socioeconomic levels (see: https://gender.cgiar.org/themes/gennovate/). 
ii
 Rogers does not use the term agency as such. Instead he refers to self-efficacy, which he 
defines as an individual’s belief that he or she can control their future (2003, p. 200), and states 
that “an individual is more likely to adopt an innovation if he or she has more self-efficacy and 
believes that he or she is in control, rather than thinking that the future is determined by fate” 
(p. 290). In his framework, Rogers associates earlier adopters in a system with greater levels of 
self-efficacy compared to later adopters (p. 298).   
iii
 Third-level administrative divisions of Ethiopia, further subdivided into wards (kebele). 
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