Need for gender-sensitivity in innovation and entrepreneurship development

In her presentation Valentina C. Materia explained that for long entrepreneurship has been stimulated to reach wealth generation, creating economic value. Nowadays, entrepreneurship is also viewed as a path to the enhancement of social value; entrepreneurship by women and minorities has recently become a prominent focus in research. Nevertheless, who identifies as an entrepreneur has remained largely male-centered and associated with masculine traits such as risk taker, money maker, usually a white-middle age, well educated, solo entrepreneur. Similarly, innovation is depicted as mainly technological, radical and big-scale. In combination with entrepreneurship it would fuel opportunities for success and growth, though these opportunities are not distributed equally.

The presentation elaborated on the new insights from three recent international projects across continents with respectively Valentina Materia herself, Bettina Bock and Jessica Duncan in the lead for WUR:

• FermFood: Traditional fermented foods to promote food and nutrition security. Entrepreneurship, value chains/product development and microbial ecology in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Benin (INREF)
• Grass Ceiling: Gender Equality in Rural and Agricultural Innovation Systems (EU)
• SWIFT: Supporting Women-led Innovation in Farming Territories (EU)

Women as assets to revitalize rural areas and communities
Valentina C. Materia first stressed that the type of innovations by the participating rural women, albeit from Europe or Africa, contributed to the sustenance and the resilience of their rural areas and communities. The projects showed that these rural women did not innovate as individuals, but with their communities in mind. Regardless of geographies and contexts, they innovated out of care for the livelihoods of their families and communities in which they engaged by taking up multiple roles at the same time while securing a safety net around them. They also sustained the local rural identity by producing much demanded local food products and thus preserving tradition as an important asset. Heritage functioned as rather constitutive to their innovative credibility. Despite their innovations were not championed as ‘fireworks’, their impact was great at local scale. This led to the conclusion that women are valuable assets to revitalize rural areas and sustain their communities. 

Motivation and ambitions beyond financial reasons
From the participating women was learned that most important to them was the autonomy they gained and set them free. This largely contrasted with the stereotypical image of entrepreneurship as led by financial motivations to start an entrepreneurial journey. The women formulated their motivations and ambitions as gaining autonomy, control over their own time and safeguarding a good family-work balance. They also felt motivated to innovate for cultural conservation and sustaining the future of their rural areas, e.g., by the preservation of landscapes, ecological protection, and traditional sustainable practices. In addition, their work provided social connections, connections with nature, and pride for taking advantage of (economic) opportunities. 

Gender specific barriers 
Rural women’s stories also revealed the barriers they encountered. Traditional gender norms, power relations and patriarchal thinking in rural regions limited their professional careers and sustained economic dependency. In addition, a lack of infrastructure and care facilities in rural areas hampered the reconciliation of work and family. The farm women were confronted with limited access to resources including knowledge, finance and land for longstanding legal, social, and cultural reasons. For instance, since long men have been favoured in land transfer, inheritance and succession practices. Women also experienced gender norms in the undervaluing of their work on- and off- farm. This correlated with the male farmer being considered as the one to take the lead and represent the farm household. Being overlooked, criticized and lacking support of family impacted on women’s potential as it undermined their self-confidence and courage, and fueled fear of failure, uncertainty and performance anxiety. Overall, these are embedded in a traditional orientation of agricultural knowledge and innovation systems, and indicate the need to reinforce rather than negate women's innovations as transformative to our food systems and their identities.

Resilience by cherishing multiple performances
Nevertheless, most women showed resilience by relying on their embeddedness in a very complex system with personal contacts and networks at its heart. By informal exchange, they managed to transform individual agency into business potential and to safeguard their way of addressing challenges. By acting as custodians of historical and ecological indigenous knowledge, women profited from competitive advantages. What the diverse women had in common, was that their drive included motherhood, spirituality, identity. They considered their engagement in innovation and in entrepreneurship as leading to  multidimensional  performances beyond the economic ones.

Transformation of commonly used orientations by using feminist research approach
The insights derived from the three projects ask for transforming the commonly used orientation of agricultural knowledge and innovation systems to innovation and entrepreneurship. Especially the SWIFT project provided clues to build on to reinforce women’s identity according to their own diverse notions and perspectives. The project especially worked with women farmers and social movements sustaining agroecology. It exemplified an Action Research perspective by supporting and amplifying the voices of women and gender diversities within Europe. To do justice to diversity and inclusivity, it took an intersectional perspective addressing multiple social dimensions of (in)equality next to gender. The approach required continuous creativity in designing specific timelines, strategies, and methods. It became clear that there was no single way to engage and ensure the participation of diverse persons in the project. Participation had to be shaped in many forms (research on, research with and research for) while different approaches had their own pros and cons and different demands. Therefore, ensuring and maintaining an ethics of care, a commitment to non-extractive approaches and regular assessments and adaptions were found crucial. The project also exemplified the importance of producing diverse outcomes, from academic papers to comic books and games to enable effective exchange, sharing, and learning together. 

Beyond women only and individualized approaches
Building on the insights from the projects, Valentina C. Materia ended with a final reflection: research and policymaking must go beyond reducing gender  to women and beyond individualized strategies and solutions to fight structural challenges. While it is important to promote diverse women’s contributions and showcase them as role models, we must together work on strategies and solutions that address the collective and structural dynamics of power to leverage longstanding barriers.

Listening well, unlearning imposing research attitude, and widening orientations
In the working groups in person and online, much of the presentation found resonance. The discussions addressed the core question of how research and policy would better recognize diverse rural and agricultural women’s identities, their agency and perspectives on innovation and entrepreneurship.
In the plenary, more was exchanged about what methods would be appropriate for such research. It was underlined to be open to listen well to the women and other practitioners in the field without imposing one own project goals. This would require unlearning of providing ready made solutions quickly and investing in building longer term engagement and trust. In order to widen the perspectives on innovation and entrepreneurship it was considered key to move discussions beyond economic viability as main orientation and add ecological soundness, social fairness and equity, and cultural embeddedness. Finally, when research inspired by feminist learning would also work with rural men innovators and entrepreneurs, that might also bring new insights on how they value their care, embeddedness and resilience which can be articulated and work supportive to their diverse motivations and ambitions, barriers and potential as well. 

This colloquium was co-organised by Margreet van der Burg, Valentina Materia, Jessica Duncan and Nicole Ercoli, with support of the Education & Research pillar of the WUR Gender+ Equality Plan, and the three international projects at stake.