Gender responsive technology assessment index: Scaling inclusive climate smart interventions in data-limited settings

CONTEXT Responsible scaling of agricultural innovations requires a nuanced understanding of technical, socioeconomic, and ecological contexts. Evaluating existing technologies using gender-responsive indicators helps inform ex-ante prioritisation when selecting among competing innovations. Although extensive knowledge exists on the gendered effects of innovations and barriers to their adoption, a comparative prioritisation framework for assessing the suitability of technology for female farmers is lacking. OBJECTIVE We develop a novel Gender Responsive Technology Assessment Index, an analytical framework to prioritise agricultural interventions for scaling based on gender-responsive technology traits. The gender responsive parameters include key welfare indicators such as employment, time requirement and drudgery. METHOD We outline a spatial prioritisation methodology to pre-inform the gender-based assessment of interventions before promoting technologies in specific geographies. This spatial prioritisation framework is designed to work in data-limited settings, where demographic and gender-disaggregated data are scarce. Additionally, we incorporate the intersectional division of labour into the index to account for social differences in responsible scaling. We consider differences in livelihood identities by focusing on ‘cultivator’ and ‘labourer’ in the segmented rural labour market. RESULT AND CONCLUSION We apply this gender responsive prioritisation framework to multiple climate-smart interventions in India. Our results show spatial differences in prioritisation outcomes for ‘machine-oriented’ and ‘non-machine-oriented’ technologies, driven by competing effects such as employment displacement and other gender-related factors. SIGNIFICANCE Our proposed framework can be adapted beyond CSA practices and scaled to evaluate inclusive and equitable technology adoption in the agri-food system. The overall methodological framework can assist in comparing existing technologies for ex-ante prioritisation and gender inclusive scaling. It can complement existing approaches of gender-inclusive responsible scaling frameworks to build equitable environments in the agri-food system.