gender gaps exist for a wide range of agricultural technologies including machines and tools improved plant varieties and animal breeds fertilisers pest control measures and management techniques often technologies and tools have been adapted to men s tasks or to equipment used by men whilst women struggle with cultivation and harvesting using handheld tools world bank fao and ifad only of the extension personnel were female several new and participatory extension approaches have been developed and tested in the past decade in an effort to move away from a topdown model to more farmerdriven services the impact of agricultural extension services can be improved by working with the whole household rather than with individuals box agriculture support programme zambia farnworth a when both women s and men s work is explicitly recognised the entire farm is strengthened as a productive enterprise