The research process itself has the potential to empower women and men, if it addresses their questions, rather than just those of the researcher. In addition, if respondents then go on to participate in devising development strategies based on the findings of a shared research process, this can play an integral role in assisting respondents to work towards achieving improvements in their own quality of life. In this paper I describe my attempts to be 'respondent-led' when conducting gender-sensitive research on how involvement in international organic food chains affects the quality of life of farmers in Madagascar, and on how these findings could be translated into a bottom-up toolkit for social certification in organic farming1.