This chapter analyzes dominant narratives around gender and agricultural development and how they relate to critical feminist thought, between 1970–2020. We outline our heuristic approach by introducing the idea of the gender tree to frame the argument, and to summarize major strains in feminist theoretical frameworks. We present two historical narratives to illustrate liberal and critical approaches: The undying allure of liberal feminism: Gender and agricultural development, and Critical approaches to land and gender justice. We show how the mainstream narratives in agricultural development largely continued to address the consequences of gender inequality, while more critical approaches focused on land rights and access, challenging and targeting the root causes of gender-inequality. We bring attention to the need to put these two narratives more regularly in conversation, for mainstream gender and agriculture narratives to move closer to addressing the root causes of inequality through gender-transformative approaches, community interventions and a focus on gender norms and masculinities.