While mechanization has emerged as a key pathway for improving agriculture in the Global South, the materialization of its perceived benefits has been hindered by gender inequalities in technology use. Deeply connected to this gendering of technology are debates about the drivers of women’s low access to and control of mechanized agricultural technologies. Drawing on the gender mechanization literature and based on insights from mechanization research in sub-Saharan Africa, we explore the multi-scalar factors that explain the gendering of mechanized technologies in the Global South and provide policy recommendations. Overall, our analysis contributes to the gender-mechanization literature by demonstrating that the masculinization of agricultural technologies is not just a product of the widely discussed role of structural factors in local agrarian spaces, but an element of the very design and engineering of mechanized technologies that attribute masculine traits to them, and the consistent deployment of gender (in)sensitive agricultural programs by governments and development partners. Given that masculinization of technology is endemic in agriculture and transcends mechanization, we identify governments and development partners as viable intermediaries who are well positioned to channel feedback on the needs of women to the agricultural machinery industry upstream, while ensuring a gender-sensitive deployment of mechanization services downstream.