Does Social Innovation Reduce the Economic Marginalization of Women? Insights from the Case of Italian Solidarity Purchasing Groups

This paper explores the relationship between gender and social innovation to highlight the possible positive effects of women's participation in social innovation in terms of protection from economic marginalization. It focuses on Italian solidarity purchasing groups as a case of social innovation in the domain of food and agriculture. The analysis is based on logistic regression using primary data collected in 2016 for the EU funded project CrESSI. The results show that participation in social innovation does protect households from worsening economic conditions. However, it was not empirically proven that there is a significant difference between men and women in the benefit enjoyed from the participation in solidarity purchasing groups.