Ensuring the participation of users in the process of agricultural technology development is an important strategic research issue, vital to achieving impact which benefits poor people. User participation in the early stages of technology design enables technologies to be adopted rapidly. Women are a particularly important category of users since household food security - especially among children in poor countries - is vitally affected by their access to income-generating technologies. Gender analysis is therefore crucial for ensuring that women's special needs are taken into account. The aim of this paper is to introduce a programme which brings a number of the international agricultural research centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research together to collaborate with of a variety of other institutions including national agricultural research institutes and non-governmental organis-ations. The programme will attempt to advance the methodological development and institutionalisation of participatory research and gender analysis (PR/GA). It will, however, take a critical approach to the range of participatory methods currently in use and it lays great emphasis on measuring impact and cost effectiveness. An important goal is to disseminate strategic methods and institutional innovations to the full range of agricultural and natural resource research and development practitioners and to improve the efficiency of the agricultural research system itself.