Dear authors of the Zero Draft of the Guidelines,
I would like to thank you for providing the opportunity to share my thoughts on the Zero Draft of the Guidelines.
The Zero Draft appropriately captures the actual challenges to achieve gender equality and the full realization of women’s and girls’ rights in the context of food security and nutrition. Personally, it was a big pleasure to aware of the initiative, and go further on the parts of the Zero Draft. Within this opportunity I would like to share my thoughts for the Part 3.
In the Part 3, each nine section presents a problem statement, a narrative and the related policy area for discussion. In these nine sections, the importance of the “social norm” dimension of the topic rises reader attention in four different sections (in section 3.1; 3.2; 3.3; 3.4.).
In the food and agriculture sector, particularly in farming profession social and cultural norms has a powerful influence on youth’s behavior in their career choices.
The influence of social and cultural norms on career choices are often neglected in the design of policy with a clear focus. The policies (that addressed to achieve gender equality and the full realization of women’s and girls’ rights in the context of food security and nutrition) may design to induce changes not only rural regions as well as urban regions. Evidences from recent studies are accumulating, for example:
- Farming profession shows gender disparities in our society (like science, technology, engineering, and math): As highlighted in some country contexts low willingness of young women to become farmer or agri-entrepreneur is explained by cultural norms, because youth understand farming as a male profession.
- Negative rural work-life perception among youth: Youth have chosen not to work in agriculture-related jobs not because they are well-suited to other jobs, but because they believe that a higher quality of life only exists in careers outside the rural community. This perception brings the lack of social and cultural identity problem that requires attention. In some country contexts, the negative rural work-life perception creates sex-selective outmigration and resulting in a shortage of women in some rural areas, culminating in rural masculinity.
- The reputational damage (low prestige) in the agriculture-related jobs need for more effective models of communication to chance the social norms.
At that point my thought is to present this overlapping important dimension of “social norms” in the policy design as a separate section (for example one further additional section) that focus only on the “social and cultural norms” with a problem statement, and the related policy area for discussion.
This further section may cover the missing points in the social and cultural norms as well as merge the important points that are already mentioned under the four sections (in section 3.1; 3.2; 3.3; 3.4.) of the current draft version.
What types of policy interventions are most likely to trigger a shift in the social and cultural norms, and helpful to spread within the society would be worthy to discuss further with clear policy actions.
For example, the role of digital networks on career construction cannot be denied due to their strong influence on career initiation, and/or career changes (career mobility) for the youth living in urban regions. These tools may use not only for rural youths’ career progress in food security and nutrition (as detailed within section 3.3.4), but also one can use these digital tools to attract educated urban youths to the rural regions (e.g., studied in the back to land movement) with a new career initiative, and/or career change plans in agriculture and farming sectors.
A second example for the policy areas for discussion may include the new social identity that we observe in our society, particularly among young women. Todays’ youth show a high environmental sensibility relative to previous generations. The finding that young women hold more environmental concerns relative to young males is one of the most robust effects in environmental psychology (e.g., pro-environmental behaviors), and political economics (e.g., climate policies) both in developing and developed economies. An online search for “young environmentalists” returns with a high number of young women: Greta Thunberg, Sweden; Luisa Neubauer, Germany and Isra Hirsi, USA. The environmental sensibility of young female would be an avenue to support their sustainable farming and food system practices (as tpointed out within section 3.4) with professional and modern farmer identities.
Thanks for your attention.
I would like to thanks again for the opportunity.
Kind regards
Dr. İlkay Unay-Gailhard
Researcher
İlkay Unay-Gailhard