Abstract New agricultural technologies such as improved maize varieties (IMVs) promise important benefits – increased incomes, lower workloads, and better food security – among others. When such technologies are introduced, they can denaturalize and expose gender norms and power relations because the adoption of such technologies inevitably requires women and men to renegotiate the rules of the game. This article asks: How do women negotiate power relations and their expression in gender norms to secure benefits from improved maize varieties (IMVs), and more broadly, to expand their decision-making space? We draw on data from four Nigerian case-studies, two from the North and two from the Southwest. The findings are analyzed through a conceptual framework utilizing five different concepts of power. Findings are remarkably similar across all sites. Women are constrained by powerful gender norms which privilege men's agency and which frown upon women's empowerment. There is limited evidence for change in some contexts through expansion in women's agency. The implications for maize research and development is that an improved understanding of the complex relational nature of empowerment is essential when introducing new agricultural technologies.

中文翻译：

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不平等的合作伙伴：尼日利亚女性和男性玉米农民之间的权力、代理和利益之间的关联

摘要 新的农业技术，如改良的玉米品种 (IMV)，有望带来重要的好处——增加收入、减少工作量和改善粮食安全——等等。当这些技术被引入时，它们会破坏和暴露性别规范和权力关系，因为这些技术的采用不可避免地需要女性和男性重新谈判游戏规则。本文询问：女性如何协商权力关系及其在性别规范中的表达，以确保从改良玉米品种 (IMV) 中获益，以及更广泛地扩大她们的决策空间？我们利用来自四个尼日利亚案例研究的数据，两个来自北部，两个来自西南部。研究结果通过使用五种不同权力概念的概念框架进行分析。所有站点的结果都非常相似。女性受到强大的性别规范的约束，这些规范赋予男性能动性，不赞成赋予女性权力。在某些情况下，通过扩大妇女能动性而发生变化的证据有限。玉米研究和开发的意义在于，在引入新的农业技术时，更好地理解赋权的复杂关系是必不可少的。