FAO supports farmers by disseminating innovative technologies and practices for crops, fisheries, livestock and forest management. Technologies can substantially reduce work burdens, minimize food loss and improve efficiency across agrifood systems, from production (land preparation, harvesting and animal breeding) to processing (drying, cooling, storing, shelling, sorting and milling) and distribution (packaging and shipping). However, if not equally accessible, technologies may exacerbate inequalities and lead to job losses for women through automation and mechanization. 

International frameworks recognize the transformative potential of technology for women’s empowerment. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development highlights technology as an enabler of equality, and Article 14 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women calls for developing and disseminating technologies appropriate for rural women. 

Despite these commitments, women’s access to sustainable agricultural mechanization is still limited by structural, institutional and socio-cultural constraints. Women participate less in groups, cooperatives and service networks that facilitate access to hired services or collective ownership. Discriminatory social norms assign women to low-skilled, time-consuming manual tasks and discourage use of powered machinery. Women have lower access to training on safe operation and maintenance, often face communication barriers with machinery dealers and service agents, and encounter male-dominated technical support spaces. Financial exclusion, due to lack of collateral, limited credit options and restricted control over household income, further undermines women’s ability to acquire or maintain equipment. Moreover, many machines are not designed to be ergonomically suited to women, increasing safety risks and reducing usability. Technological innovations may also ignore crops which are dominated by women, or parts of the value chain in which women are more likely to work. These barriers reflect broader unequal power dynamics inherent to innovation processes. 

Equal access to technologies, skills and information can expand women’s agency and empowerment processes. However, without intentional efforts to transform restrictive norms and institutions, new technologies may reinforce inequalities, increasing unpaid workloads, shifting profitable activities to men or displacing women from jobs through machinery substitution. 

Whether innovations are externally introduced or locally developed, adoption requires agency - the capacity to make decisions and act on them - a key dimension of women’s empowerment. Agency is shaped by local opportunities giving farmers power to act through an intertwined configuration bringing together technologies, natural resource management systems, infrastructure, institutions, markets and social norms. To ensure equal benefits from technology beyond access, it is important to invest in participatory design and testing, targeted training, strengthening of extension and financial services. It is also key to engage both women and men to change restrictive norms governing technology use, ownership and decision-making. 

Gender norms influence mobility, risk-taking, asset control and decision-making power, shaping who adopts technologies, who benefits and who bears risks. To address power dynamics, gender norms and discriminatory institutions, the application of gender transformative approaches to technology is needed.  

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) promotes safe, affordable and culturally acceptable labour-saving technologies, alongside supportive institutional and policy reforms, recognizing that meaningful benefits require transforming existing systems and power relations that shape innovation. FAO collaborates with partners, ncluding IFAD, the World Bank and UNIDO, and national institutions to raise awareness of women’s work burden, disseminate innovative and labour-saving technologies and enhance gender responsiveness of service providers. Programmes address community and household norms that undermine women’s access to innovation.