Workshop Report: Gender and Agriculture after Neoliberalism?

This is the report of a workshop on Gender and Agriculture after Neoliberalism, organized on 19-20 July 2012 to help the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) and the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies (IHEID) assess knowledge gaps and define new perspectives to understand the relationship between the rapidly changing policy landscape, and transformations of gender power relations in the countryside.

The main aim of the workshop was to flesh out key research questions with a view to developing a research proposal. It sought to pool the knowledge of a group of researchers from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe who are studying the gender dimensions of agrarian change in a variety of developing countries from diverse disciplinary standpoints.

The organizers drafted a concept note, which was distributed before the workshop, and invited participants to prepared short inputs based on the note. The workshop allowed for a genuine discussion among potential research partners about the conceptual framing of a research project—something that is highly appreciated, but often missing, in North-South collaborations.

The workshop was organized into four sessions:

• Agrarian transformations and their gender fault lines;
• Changing land tenure systems and their gender implications;
• Agrarian capitalism, global forces and land grabbing: Continuity and change; and
• Feminization of labour within agrarian economies: Autonomy or subordination?