The bioeconomy has become a central pillar of European strategies for sustainability, innovation, and economic resilience. Built on the production and use of biological resources, the primary sector, including agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and other biomass-based activities, serves as its foundation. While the bioeconomy is often framed as forward-looking and transformative, its foundations remain shaped by long-standing structural inequalities. Among the most persistent of these is the gender gap that continues to characterize primary sector participation across the European Union.
Women play a substantial role in bioeconomy-related primary activities, contributing labour, knowledge, and local expertise to food production, land management, and resource stewardship. However, their participation is unevenly distributed and frequently underrecognized. Across the European Union, women account for only around one third of agricultural holding managers, despite their widespread involvement in farm and family-based production systems. This imbalance is particularly significant in the context of the bioeconomy, where formal recognition as a producer or manager often determines. [1] Moreover, across forestry and fisheries, women are disproportionately concentrated in lower-paid, seasonal, or support roles, while men continue to dominate ownership structures, leadership positions, and formal decision-making bodies throughout bioeconomy-related primary activities. Women’s central role in sustaining bio-based value chains is not adequately reflected in governance structures or economic indicators. As a result, women’s central role in sustaining bio-based value chains is not adequately reflected in governance structures or economic indicators. As a result, women’s central role in sustaining bio-based value chains is not adequately reflected in governance structures or economic indicators.
Women’s economic impact within the bioeconomy is further obscured by the way work in the primary sector is measured and categorized. According to the European Commission and its Joint Research Centre, women in bioeconomy-related primary sectors are more likely than men to engage in unpaid or informal work. Their contributions frequently fall outside standard employment categories, particularly within family farms, small-scale forestry operations, and coastal fisheries. This statistical invisibility produces an incomplete picture of who sustains the biological resource base of the bioeconomy and reinforces a perception of the sector as more gender-neutral than it is in practice. [2]
Research has also shown that gender remains marginal within bioeconomy scholarship itself. Systematic reviews of the literature show that gender considerations are rarely integrated into core analyses of bioeconomy transitions, with women seldom framed as active agents in shaping innovation pathways, governance models, or sustainability outcomes. This omission mirrors the structural inequalities embedded in the primary sector and contributes to their persistence.
PRIMED project acknowledges these pitfalls within the bioeconomy, and while we are aware that this is not something that will change overnight, we are equipping our projects with the necessary tools to combat these inequities. While our primary goal is always to make sure that we advance the agenda of the bioeconomy, at the end of the day women are a constituent part of this process.