Laxmi Pant

Gender mainstreaming has been prioritised within the national agricultural policies of many countries, including Nepal. Yet gender mainstreaming at the national policy level does not always work to effect change when policies are implemented at the local scale. In less-developed nations such as Nepal, it is rare to find a critical analysis of the mainstreaming process and its successes or failures. This paper employs a critical gender analysis approach to examine the gender mainstreaming efforts in Nepal as they move from agricultural policies to practices. The research involved a structured review of 10 key national agricultural policy documents, 14 key informant interviews, and two focus group discussions with female and male smallholder farmers. Results suggest that gender mainstreaming in national agricultural policy and practice has largely failed. The creation of the Gender Equity and Social Inclusion (GESI) section within the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development is paradoxical to gender-responsive agricultural innovation because it has received limited human and financial resources with an expectation for women to manage this policy development in informal and largely unrecognized ways. At the regional and local levels, implementation of fundamental gender equity and social inclusion procedures—such as gender-responsive planning and budgeting—has become staff responsibility without requisite formal training, gender sensitization, and follow-up. In Nepal, women as smallholder farmers or agricultural labourers are recognized as a vulnerable group in need of social protection, but the welfare approach to gender mainstreaming has achieved little in terms of gender equity, social inclusion, and agricultural sustainability. This paper concludes that what is generally missing is a systemic transformation of gender roles and relations in agriculture, with policies that would support rural women's empowerment through the provision of economic and political rights and entitlement to productive resources.

This research examines a series of case studies from the agricultural sector to illustrate how various models of innovation embrace value proposition. A conscious value contestation at the interface of science, policy and civil society requires transformations in the triple-helix model of university-government-industry collaboration, because reiterations in the triple-helix model of innovation, such as quadruple, quintuple and higher helices, do not necessarily address civil society concerns for human values and science ethics. This research develops and tests a matrix model of university-government-industry-civil society collaboration, which involves the co-creation of inclusive and transformational spaces for value proposition. Findings suggest that the matrix model of innovation institutionalises citizen science as it serves as a moral heuristic to make seemingly apolitical science responsive to essentially contested societal values.