1 How does gender affect the adoption of different typologies of innovations? The case of Malawi Salvatore Farace 1 Giuseppe Lubrano Lavadera 2 and Fernanda Mazzotta 3 Abstract Women participation in entrepreneurship and firm activity is recognized to play an important role in terms of employment and income creation especially in developing economies; innovation is also a crucial element in economic development. Nevertheless the role of women in the firms only recently has gained large attention while the gender issues of innovation are seldom discussed. Starting from existing literature, we analyse the propensity to innovate of Malawian firms where the female role is relevant in terms of ownership, management or participation in the decision process. This choice is suggested also by the country matrilineal structure of society in many of the regions/districts in Malawi. To attain the above objective the study uses an ordinary regression, Probit regression and Oaxaca on sample of firms extract by the World Bank Enterprise Survey data, in order to estimate the role of female, skills and networks on innovation in Malawian firms. Results suggest that firms are more innovative when the role of women in terms of ownership and management is relevant; traditional variables of innovation as R&D expenditure have also a positive impact on innovation. At the same time, the participation of employee with new ideas and training activity positively influence innovativeness; crime and corruption that generally have a big negative impact on firms activity, in this case represent a strong incentive to innovate, while are less relevant the asymmetries in the access to credit useful to finance innovation. Keywords: gender, firm management, innovation, Malawi, bribery 1 University of Salerno; Via Giovanni Paolo II, 132- Fisciano, 84084-Salerno -Italy; sfarace@unisa.it 2 University of Salerno; Via Giovanni Paolo II, 132- Fisciano, 84084-Salerno -Italy; glubrano@unisa.it 3 University of Salerno; Via Giovanni Paolo II, 132- Fisciano, 84084-Salerno -Italy; mazzotta@unisa.it