Gender and farming advisory videos. Evidence from Bihar, India

Farmers increasingly use videos and other digital tools to access and share farming information. However, women in agriculture have commonly been excluded from influencing and accessing these digital tools. Rigorous evaluations have found that including women farmers in the creation and screening of farming videos can benefit women through improved productivity and decision-making power. But what is needed for extension workers to make these videos accessible to women farmers outside of carefully managed pilots? We implemented a randomized controlled trial testing how the gender of farmers featured in wheat farming advisory videos influenced how much, and with whom, 294 extension workers shared these videos in rural Bihar. We interpreted results through twenty follow-up interviews and the ‘Mechanisms and Conditions’ framework based in affordance theory. We found the extent to which extension workers shared videos with women farmers hinged on extension workers' perceptions, material resources, and cultural contexts, rather than the gender of farmers featured in videos. From a theoretical perspective, this core finding suggests the 'Mechanisms and Conditions' framework requires modification to account for material resource access when explaining technology use. From a practical perspective, the core finding prompts practitioners to ask ‘how might extension systems circulating digital tools be more inclusive?’, not just ‘how might we adapt digital tools to be more inclusive?’. This systems-level approach to empowering women in agricultural innovation systems could involve supporting inclusive person-to-person extension networks, and avoiding dependence on smartphone-based extension systems, like YouTube and chatbots.