Abstract Many agricultural technology interventions that aim to improve farmers’ livelihoods focus on households as the unit of analysis and ignore gender roles that entail different benefits and costs for different household members. Agricultural projects have shown limited success where gender roles and relations were ignored and thus more gender sensitive research is needed in agricultural technology development to ensure social acceptance. In this study, we address this need by investigating the importance of gender roles and relations in the case of solar fruit drying in Mozambique. We apply a variety of gender sensitive participatory methods that enable farmers to actively take part in the technology development process. First results indicate that the costs and benefits of solar fruit drying are not shared equally between genders. Women have much less time available for using the solar fruit dryer. The data also indicate that certain steps in the solar fruit drying process are clearly gender divided. We finally discuss potential mechanisms that can be applied in agricultural technology projects that can create awareness of the risk to reproduce traditional gender roles and unequal relations in the development process of new agricultural technologies.

中文翻译：

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农村农业技术发展中性别角色和关系的重要性：莫桑比克太阳能水果干燥案例研究

摘要 许多旨在改善农民生计的农业技术干预措施以家庭为分析单位，而忽略了对不同家庭成员带来不同收益和成本的性别角色。农业项目在性别角色和关系被忽视的情况下取得的成功有限，因此需要在农业技术开发中进行更多的性别敏感研究，以确保社会接受。在这项研究中，我们通过调查莫桑比克太阳能水果干燥案例中性别角色和关系的重要性来满足这一需求。我们采用各种性别敏感的参与方法，使农民能够积极参与技术开发过程。初步结果表明，太阳能水果干燥的成本和收益在性别之间并未平均分配。女性使用太阳能水果烘干机的时间要少得多。数据还表明，太阳能水果干燥过程中的某些步骤明显存在性别差异。我们最后讨论了可应用于农业技术项目的潜在机制，这些机制可以提高人们对在新农业技术开发过程中复制传统性别角色和不平等关系的风险的认识。