WUNRN
Direct Link to Full 13-Page Report:
The Right to Food, Gender Equality and Economic Policy
Meeting Report
September 16-17, 2011
THE GENDERED FOOD SYSTEM
Excerpt: The global food economy has been both gender-blind and male-biased in terms of undervaluing women’s roles in land use, production, processing, distribution, market access, trade, investment, price volatility, and food availability. Women are involved in all aspects of production, processing and distribution. They work as unpaid, contributing family workers, self-employed producers, on and off-farm employees, entrepreneurs, traders, and providers of services, technology researchers and developers, and caretakers of children and the elderly.15 On average, 43% of agricultural laborers in developing countries are women who are also the majority of food providers.16 As producers, women are often the ones who produce secondary crops for subsistence, such as legumes and vegetables, on more marginal lands.........
........A key challenge faced by women is their lack of control over land; most titles are in the name of men and where laws exist they are ignored and gendered social norms prevail. Women own less than 20% of agricultural land globally.21 In Kenya, men’s landholdings are at average three times bigger, and in Bangladesh, Ecuador and Pakistan they are twice the size of women’s.22 Women without land rights have little power over whether land is used in support of subsistence food production. Because they lack inheritance rights, they are even more vulnerable when their husbands die. In many cases women not only lack legal rights, they also lack customary rights, which are supported by traditional systems that maintain those customs, norms and values that privilege men.........