Sweden

Women-led innovation strategies

Sweden’s innovation agency must according to instruction from the government integrate a gender equality perspective in the agency’s activities and promote gender equality when distributing funds for research and innovation. They should also work to ensure that gender perspectives are included in the projects they fund, ‘when applicable’. Previous research (Petterson, 2007) has however found that their innovation policies have not mainstreamed gender as they aimed to do, and instead contributed to ‘making of men and male as the norm’. Also, the goals such as being competitive are clearly put before the goal of gender equality (Pettersson, 2007). A focus on male connoted technical and scientific knowledge as being the important kind of knowledge, and representation of inventors as men has been common. According to Nyberg (1999), innovations and inventions have masculine connotations because women inventors have been made invisible, e.g., through men seeking patents for their inventions (Barwa & Rai, 2003). Due to the horizontal gender segregation of the labour market there has been a tendency to believe that women cannot invent technical products, but rather things related to the home. Imagining innovation in a new light, may still disclose ‘paradoxical spaces’ of feminist resistance where innovation can be re-invented (Pettersson and Lindberg, 2013).

Living Lab Focus and Goals

The focus of the Swedish Living Lab are women active in farming, forestry and related activities. The main objectives for our Living Lab, in line with the GRASS CEILING project, are for the participants to develop themselves and their businesses – and work with new ideas. The women also have a chance to develop ideas and innovations that can meet societal and environmental challenges to contribute to a sustainable, equal and vibrant countryside.

For the first Living Lab workshop the objective was to get to know each other and our activities, to understand the context of our Living Lab within the GRASS CEILING project and to begin exploring the goals of GRASS CEILING: a sustainable, equal and vibrant countryside and new thinking and innovation. As the Living Lab follows a participatory method, the more specific objectives will be developed and deepened over the course of the project.

Activities and innovations being developed

The Living Lab organises workshops where women innovators discuss their innovative initiatives, the barriers encountered and the support needed, with relevant multi-actors to co-design changes in the agriculture knowledge innovation system (AKIS) to meet their needs. The participants and co-leads have so far initiated discussions on gender equality, innovation, sustainability and rural development. The participants share a strong commitment for contributing to sustainable rural development – and the importance of women’s entrepreneurship for such a development. At the first Living Lab workshop, during an exercise called ‘The headlines’, the women were encouraged to make visions for the future – imagining what they and the Lab will have achieved during the course of the GRASS CEILING project, and beyond. Thoughts on the Lab’s achievements comprised of having contributed to the creation conditions for thriving rural areas –including well-functioning social– and child-care services, more rural women pursuing rural businesses and a larger degree of self-sufficiency in food production.

How the activities fit into the overall GRASS CEILING objectives

The activities performed and planned  for our Living lab are in line with the GRASS CEILING objectives, especially the objectives:

Co-create knowledge of gender norms and the drivers/ enablers of women-led innovation. Using this co-created knowledge the Living Labs will actively support women innovators to find out about the specifics of women-led innovations in farming and rural communities, including idea development and reimagining techniques within the innovation process, network learning, accessing relevant knowledge and training, and finance.

Organise specific sessions in the living labs where women innovators discuss their innovative initiatives, the barriers encountered and the support needed with relevant multi-actors to co-design changes in the agriculture knowledge innovation system (AKIS) to meet the needs of women.