Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

Studies increasingly indicate that women play a vital role in promoting food security through their active participation in the production and looking after farmland as they participate in all aspects of rural life. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), ‘despite the significant roles and responsibilities that women assume and are ascribed in food systems, in ensuring food security and nutrition at household, community, national and transnational levels, they face a systemic disadvantage in accessing productive resources, services, and information.’ By enshrining gender issues in the draft roadmap, UNDP is on the right track.

Thus, women own less land, have limited ability to hire labor, and have impeded access to credit, extension, and other services. Women farmers cultivate smaller plots and less profitable crops than male farmers. This not only relegates women to undesirable levels but also puts the socio-political and economic affairs of the communities under jeopardy. Essentially, food security, which is defined as the availability and the access of food to all people, whereas nutrition security demands the intake of a wide range of foods that provides the essential needed nutrients, is also thrown into disarray. Given the gender inequalities along the entire food production chain, that is, from farm to plate, all but impede the attainment of food and nutritional security. Besides, gender inequalities in access to productive resources such as land, labor, fertilizer, credit, technology, extension, and markets) for example, it can negatively affect food availability. 

Thus, streamlining gender issues and increasing women in the food production and supply chain will dramatically help to enhance the productivity and consecutively the production of food. On the other hand, it can also assist in providing opportunities for income generation. It generally includes improving nutritional advice through home economics programs and enhancing the quality of rural life through community development. As World Food Program (WFP) has put it, the economic empowerment of rural women as farmers, entrepreneurs, and leaders contributes to alleviating poverty, increasing food security, and achieving gender equality. 

It is safe to state that gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment in the context of food security and nutrition will bolster the achievement of SDGs, particularly such as Goal 1:No Poverty, Goal 2: Zero Hunger, Goal 3: Good Health and Well-being.

Firstly, the language should be reviewed to include women farmers as against women underrepresentation in decision making.

Women and women led organization are just gaining recognition in Nigeria but more needs to be done to ensure inclusion of women in decision making. Also, there should be finance specifically for women farmers and women-led organization to support specifically to support women in farming.

In my personal experience, my mother owned a large farm, but there was NEVER any form of support and encouragement to support her to produce more, but when its time to sell, buyers are more than happy to reach out to her to buy the commodity. 

Farming and agriculture is more about business and profit than it is for nutrition, hence it is mostly not perceived as needing support from people and organization for the overall good of the society.

Women also face threat especially in parts of Nigeria where insecurity persists and women are more vulnerable to threat of kidnap, and to gender based violence. Men and boys in parts of this region congregate for farming, and women in some cases play supportive roles, of planting, cooking and harvesting. This also increases the vulnerability of women especially in very isolated and remote farming communities or lands, where a call for help may be ignored or not heard.

Here are some recommendations:

• Advocate for increased inclusion of women in decision making, programmes should be designed bottom up not top bottom which seems to be the order of the day.
• Increase local capacity of women, from compulsory primary and secondary education, to vocational education on farming and agricultural production and the value chain.
• Encourage more women participation in traditional and cultural decision making, urging traditional and religious leaders to open up the spaces for women in decision making.
• Promote financial literacy specifically for women farmers.
• Support and set aside specific funds and financial and technical assistance to women farmers. 
• Forge greater collaboration with security agencies and social service providers to promote and support women farmers.

English translation below

بعد الاطلاع على الخطوط التوجيهية التي سبق وأن تم إرسالها من قبل ممثلتكم الست اسيل عبد الحميد المحترمة .. نود بيان أنهاقد غطت اغلب المشاكل والسلبيات التي  تعاني منها المرأة الشرق أوسطية عموما ونطمح أن يتم تفعيل قوانين أو ضوابط دولية ووطنية لغرض حماية حقوقها واعطائها الفرص لإبراز دورها مجتمعيا وخروجها من التسلط وأساليب التضييق والأعراف الاجتماعية والعشائرية ضمن حدود المعقول وبما يضمن التزاماتها تجاه المجتمع والدين والعرف الاجتماعي .. 

تحياتي لكم 

رئيس  بايلوجيين 

لميس منيف عبد اللطيف 

مسؤولة النوع الاجتماعي 

وزارة البيئة العراقية     

After reviewing the guidelines previously sent by your representative, Aseel Abdel Hamid, we would like to state that they have addressed most of the problems and negative points that women in the Middle East suffer from. Thus, we hope that there will be operative international and national laws or regulations to protect women’s rights and give them the opportunity to demonstrate their role in the community, and to reasonably set them free from dominance and restrictions as well as clan and social customs, while ensuring their commitment towards the society and adherence to religion and social norms.

Sincere Regards,

Lead Biologist

Lamis Munif Abdel Latif

Gender Officer

Ministry of Environment - Iraq

Dear colleagues

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to participate in the Consultation for the development of the CFS Voluntary Guidelines on Gender Equality and Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment in the Context of Food Security and Nutrition. I would like to share with you the following points that, in my view could be of relevance and added value if considered in the document.

The financial inclusion of women:

Strengthening levels of financial access and use can act as a major driver for women’s increased participation in the economy in general and food security and nutrition in particular.

Relevant recommendations can be found in the FAO publication: “Deconstructing the gender gap in rural financial institutions”, to improve women access to credits, such as:

·       Reform and enforce regulations on asset ownership;

·       Foster gender sensitive consumer protection norms;

·       Develop the financial infrastructure;

·       Bundle the offer of services with financial education;

·       Develop the financial education of rural women;

·       Implement gender sensitive lending methodologies and collateral requirements.

The relationship between trade policies and gender:

Gender blind trade policies risk exacerbating existing gender inequality.

Many countries conduct trade reforms which has an effect on employment, income, production and prices, none of which are gender neutral. UNCTAD developed a policy brief  to assess the multifaceted gender-related consequences of trade policies. The ex-ante impact assessment and other tools can probably be of relevance to the voluntary guidelines.

The indirect gender violence:

The indirect gender violence is built-up through a false consciousness and misperceived social and religious norms that buy into the control system exacerbating the gender inequality. Although sensitive and critical in some cases, dismantling the misperceived social  norms and religious concepts should be on the agenda to unleash the potentials of women and reposition  women and men  based on the human right based approach which reflects in a better positioning of women along the agricultural sector.

The intra household inequality:

There is evidence that intra household inequality seriously affects poverty, food security and nutrition measurements. Measurements are usually done at household level and overlook the per capita consumption affected by gender dynamics. Undernourished people are not only found in poor households. Moreover, inequality in nutrition intakes (calorie and protein intake) does exist between and within households due to intra household gender dynamics. There is also intra household gender inequalities due to marital status (widows and divorcees are sometimes discriminated, inequalities in polygamous households), boys and girls children, first child and last child, etc… (Reference Cait Brown – Central European University).

Livestock and gender

Livestock are an asset that women can more easily own. It is generally easier for women in developing countries to acquire livestock assets, whether through inheritance, markets or collective action processes, than it is for them to purchase land or other physical or financial assets. The use of livestock as collaterals can also be an option for women access to finance.

I hope this is helpful

Thank you and best regards

Marie-Louise

In some countries of Africa, including Sudan, women work in agriculture and various handicrafts such as pottery, palm tree products. I will talk briefly about the work of rural women in agriculture.

Women - married or unmarried - carry out all the traditional agricultural operations of a harsh nature on her physical constitution, but she bears all those in order to:

1/ Provide a material income for her family throughout the periods following the agricultural season, which is related only to autumn (rainfed agriculture).

2/ Providing a stock of agricultural products to meet the needs of the family throughout the year.

Thus, you have participated in providing:

1/ Food security

2/ Nutrition: by preparing daily meals for her family members as well as, many dried meals to be stored and consumed throughout the year.

With all of what was mentioned above, we find that women do not find sufficient support from the family men (father, husband or brother). Rather, their rights are digested and they do not even receive a word of thanks for all this mighty work.

So, I address the following:

1/ Training of women working in the agricultural field;

2/ Transferring to her simple technologies that are easy to trade and work with;

3/ Financing women with rewarding and non-pressurizing financing terms for capital recovery;

4/ Ensuring the education of her children;

5/ Provide a stable, safe and clean environment;

6/ Ensuring nearby markets to sell and exchange their products;

7/ A guarantee that she will obtain a financial profit of her own in return for the work she does and for the agricultural products she sells and other processed or handcrafts.

Prof. Dr. Nawal Abdel-Gayoum Abdel-Rahman

General Director of

National food Research Centre

Khartoun North, Khartoum

Sudan

Women and girls Nutrition is hindered by a common cause. These costs are as follows:

A. Limited opportunities example cash for goods.

B. Limited choice by men who are in charge of the resources and power.

C. Lack of or poor education. 

These can further be analysed as follows:

Women do not have access to cash as do their men counterparts.This is necessary to support.

Most of the women live in rural areas, making it difficult to access modern goods from the cities.

Poor education hinders the women from reading and understanding simple instructions and to do the necessary things and eat good food as well as rest for a healthier life.

Nutrition sensitive agriculture must form part of the curricula for a better healthy mother hood.

My contribution concerning "3.3.2 Access to advisory and extension services":

"Gender mainstreaming in the public extension services system":

It is worthy to highlight that gender mainstreaming into the agricultural advisory extension services system is a crucial issue. The majority of female farmers in rural and conservative communities do not often receive extension services and training, and if they receive, they do receive extension only in specific field such as food processing. That brought about considerable information asymmetry\technical and marketing information gaps in agriculture. To mitigate it, in my opinion, the active participation of female farmers must be ensured, that would be considered through application of some methods and counter-measures, they can be decided based on predominant culture and social environment in the target area. Of which, for instance,: making sure that female farmers or their groups are selected, considering a tailor-made extension program, knowing women farmers specific performed tasks in agriculture, promoting small-scale farming techniques (a scale fits to female farmers farming), proposing convenient training time and duration, training venues (mixed or separated), introducing kids’ taking care tools during the training session, convenient means of transport (taking part in study tours), listening to their voices and suggestions, etc.

When access to information is guaranteed, women farmers would be able to engage in a more feasible manner in agriculture and marketing, and their crops productivity and income would be improved significantly. Generally, we can say that we shouldn’t underrated the powerful of information and extension in the women economic and social empowerment and inclusion field.

Amin ABU-ASLOUD

Farm Management and Extension Expert

State of Palestine- Ramallah

This zero draft guideline is good and I believe it meets its objective since it is intended to serve as basis for igniting more ideas related to the issue. From my experience, women and girls’ participation and decision making in production and marketing activities are also more compelling factors for food and nutrition security both at household and community level. However, this guideline has touched slightly in indirect way. In addition, the way family’s treatment of siblings (male and female) at household gives a way to make the gender disparity intergenerational. Therefore, the parenting styles of parents should be examined and brings into a table of policy agenda.

We all agree, advancing gender equality and women's and girls' empowerment is critical for ending hunger and ensuring food security and nutrition for all towards achieving 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It makes it imperative that the individuals and institutions responsible for education, research and training in agricultural & food sector are sufficiently sensitized on importance of gender equality. We need to have programmes to accredit education, research and training institutions for gender equality eco-systems prevailing in these institutions so that they can spread the message what it means to be gender sensitive in matters of education and capacity building. We are currently implementing one such programme GATI (Gender Advancement for Transforming Institutions). The GATI model draws inspiration from the Athena SWAN Gender Equality Charter and accreditation framework operated by Advance HE, UK. A growing number of universities, science departments and research institutes in UK have voluntarily joined the charter and been recognized for their accomplishments. Recognizing the framework’s evidence-based approach to analysis, action and demonstrable impact, several countries have been inspired to join the Athena SWAN collaborative international network and launch similar initiatives. With the launch of GATI, India too joins the list. GATI aspires to create an enabling environment for equal participation of women in science, technology, engineering, medicine and mathematics disciplines (STEMM) at all levels, addressing deep-rooted problems. It envisages a fresh perspective on not just measures for increasing retention and recruitment but the progression of women throughout their professional journey.

I believe, the programmes like GATI have potential to make strong impact on food security & nutrition, so must find encouragement from the policy makers and the governments in developing countries in particular.

My blog on GATI: https://agrilinks.org/post/marching-towards-gender-equality-research-an…

My institutional link: http://www.ivri.nic.in/OtherPages/gati.aspx

Thanks!