In the project Lyftet (appr. The Lifting), 2002-2005, four regional networks came together in order to "lift" their experiences of promoting women's entrepreneurship and innovation to a joint platform of knowledge. Participating at dialogue seminars arranged within each network, the network members shared experiences with each other as well as with the four researchers being involved (me being one of them). My part of the research dealt with how the participants in the dialogues seminars came to challenge delimiting assumptions within Sweden's innovation policy. In this paper, I will use two alignments of action research to scrutinize our common strive to spread the preferential right of interpretation more equally among women and men on the area of innovation policy. Specifically, I will investigate how Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Participatory and Appreciative Action Research (PAAR) might cast a light over this process. As I will show, the tools provided by these two alignments of action research have the potential to combine criticism with change, thus linking two crucial - but sometimes competing - aspects of gender equality aspirations. Tony Ghaye (2007, p 52), one of the initiators of PAAR, offers a bridge between criticism and action in writing that: "Being critical is not negatively pulling everything apart. It's more about trying to see things differently and do different things".