Gender Equality in Rural and Agricultural Innovation SystemS
GRASS Ceiling is a Horizon Europe project (2023-2025) aims to to boost women-led innovation in farming and rural areas. It is coordinated by the South East Technological University (SETU) and brings together 25 partners from across Europe.
The project will develop a context where women can drive socio-ecological transitions, that is, develop innovations in response to socio-ecological challenges and strengthen the resilience of rural areas. This is essential to deliver the UN’s goals on gender parity, realise the EU gender equality strategy, and achieve the goals of the Green Deal, the Farm to Fork strategy, the Long-Term Vision for Rural Areas and the European Pillar of Social Rights.
AEIDL is the leader of the work package on co-creation of recommendations and tools for policy and knowledge and innovation systems that boost women’s role in the sustainable development of agriculture and rural areas. Its work is designed to respond to three specific objectives:
- To develop recommendation in collaboration with policy makers, women innovators, and other actors involved in the innovation eco-system, to repair the gender-bias of relevant policies and governance frameworks
- To address the gender-specific obstacles identified by developing relevant innovation-support tools.
- To develop policy tools for policy makers and trainers to identify, reward and favour the adoption of practical user-centred women-led interactive innovation initiatives.
In addition, together with COPA-COGECA, AEIDL coordinates the European Policy Forum for women-led innovation in agriculture and rural areas for social learning and showcasing women-led innovation. It is understood as an European-wide Science-Society-Policy interface to:
- provide a space for engagement between project stakeholders (including women innovators, living labs, researchers, etc.) and the wider community of experts, researchers, policy makers and stakeholder organisation at different levels working on supporting women-led innovation in agriculture and rural areas.
- offer a direct channel to facilitate knowledge transfer and peer learning, awareness-raising, and exploitation through the implementation of three international multi-actor webinars and workshops.
