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This study uses the social relations framework to explore gender norms and relations surrounding banana production and banana bunchy top disease (BBTD) containment in six pilot communities in Cameroon and Nigeria. The objective of the study is to understand how gender norms and relations shape and influence access to information and benefit-sharing of productive resources among men and women banana farmers and implications for banana production recovery in the BBTD-affected regions and disease management.

Twelve, sex-disaggregated focus group discussions with 120 farmers (78 women and 42 men banana farmers) and 24 key informants were conducted. Data on banana production, access to and decision-making rights over productive resources and social and gender norms influencing adoption were collected. Data were analyzed using a systematic content analysis approach. Results show inequalities stemming from inherent gender and social norms related to access to and decision making over productive resources limiting especially women farmers’ ability to effectively engage in training programs that could lead to adoption of recommendations and technologies. Opportunities to effectively participate in training activities were influenced by gender norms related to household decision making, gender-based labor division and multiple household tasks.

Interventions and strategies to contain the spread of BBTD should consider gender-based constraints and opportunities embedded in the communities for optimal results. Social and gender differentiations that impede women should be addressed for inclusive participation. Failure to address harmful norms and gender differentiation in the underlying social structures will benefit one group of people in the community over another.

Departing from an online interactive Gender Café on the topic of Knowledge Management (KM), jointly hosted by a UN agency and the Society of Gender Professionals, this chapter seeks to provide gender practitioners and others with practical examples of how to “gender” KM in international development. Through analyzing the travel of feminist ideas into the field of KM with inspiration from Barbara Czarniawska’s and Bernard Joerge’s (1996) theory of the travel of ideas, the chapter explores the spaces, limits, and future possibilities for the inclusion of feminist perspectives. The ideas and practical examples of how to do so provided in this chapter originated during the café, by the participants and panellists. The online Gender Café temporarily created a space for feminist perspectives. The data demonstrate how feminist perspectives were translated into issues of inclusion, the body, listening methodologies, practicing reflection, and the importance to one’s work of scrutinizing underlying values. However, for the feminist perspective to be given continuous space and material sustainability developing into an acknowledged part of KM, further actions are needed. The chapter also reflects on future assemblies of gender practitioners, gender scholars and activists, recognizing the struggles often faced by them. The chapter discusses strategies of how a collective organizing of “outside–inside” gender practitioners might push the internal work of implementing feminist perspectives forward.