Abstract

ESTEBANEZ, María Elina; SUED, Gabriela; TURKENICH, Magalí  and  NICOSIA, Sandra. Gender And Innovation In Small-Scale Farming. Rev. iberoam. cienc. tecnol. soc. [online]. 2016, vol.11, n.31, pp.217-246. ISSN 1850-0013.

Technological innovation is a meaningful aspect of the development and the productive improvement that builds on socio-technical and cultural elements. From the field of innovation sociology it has been pointed out that a strong contextual impression of the innovation processes reinforces the weight of local characteristics of agents and participating institutions. At the same time, feminist studies about technology have identified and conceptualized the gender dimensions of production, communication and social appropriation of new knowledge inscribed in technological devices and designs. On the basis of these general theses about the social aspect of innovation processes, this paper proposes a conceptual scheme to address the gender issue in a specific context: small-scale farming. It is necessary to increase the theoretical background provided by STS studies, and to include other theoretical sources developed in the field of rural and gender studies, to be able to properly portray the promotion of new farming technologies in productive activities by small communities of high social vulnerability, and low market participation. A meaningful aspect along this line is to develop the idea of female-users and male-users as participants of innovation processes, and to identify the different use and appropriation contexts of new technologies. This theoretical proposal has been recently tested in an investigation on technology innovation processes in family cotton farming in Argentina.

Keywords : Technological innovation; Gender; Family farming.