{"id":15428,"date":"2013-03-04T14:46:37","date_gmt":"2013-03-04T20:46:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress-367309-1145705.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=15428"},"modified":"2017-08-02T18:53:58","modified_gmt":"2017-08-02T22:53:58","slug":"womens-work-global-food-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/womens-work-global-food-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvesting Justice #4: Women’s Work – Gender and the Global Food System"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n Editor’s note:<\/strong> If you missed any of the previous posts in this series, they’re all available here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n By Tory Field and Beverly Bell<\/strong><\/p>\n We, women from more than 40 countries, from different indigenous peoples of Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia and Oceania, have gathered together to participate in the creation of a new right: the right to food sovereignty. We reaffirm our will to act to change the capitalist and patriarchal world which puts the interests of the market before the rights of people. We will find the energy to establish our right to food sovereignty, carrier of hope in constructing another world. We will carry this message to women all over the world.<\/p>\n – Women\u2019s Declaration on Food Sovereignty (excerpted), Ny\u00e9l\u00e9ni, Mali, February 27, 2007<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Women produce 60 to 80 percent of all food, both as subsistence farmers<\/a> and as agricultural wage laborers. They are the primary providers<\/a> for the majority of the world\u2019s 925 million hungry people, obtaining food, collecting firewood and water, and cooking. And yet they have less access to land and the resources necessary to grow on it than their male counterparts. Inequitable distribution of land, labor, and resources leaves farming women triply burdened by work: in the fields, in the home, and in society.<\/p>\n How do the agricultural policies of powerful governments and international institutions affect women? They often exacerbate gender norms and force women globally to bear the brunt of harmful changes. In the US, a corporate agribusiness model leads to violations of women’s rights in all aspects of the food system. We have adapted the following from Gender Action\u2019s 2011 report<\/a> on gender and the food crisis:<\/p>\n Though facing difficult challenges, women around the world have been making strides both in changing national policy and land movements themselves. In some places, women are gaining greater access to arable land, technology, credit, markets, training, equipment, and control over agricultural knowledge. In certain countries, they have won the right for their name, not just their husband’s, to go on the land title, making them direct beneficiaries of land reform.<\/p>\n Next:<\/strong> The Food Sovereignty Movement and the Role of Women<\/a><\/p>\n Image:<\/strong> In the Mexican state of Chihuahua, Rar\u00e1muri women choose corn to save for next year\u2019s planting. They just finished participating in a farmer-to-farmer workshop on seed selection. Photo \u00a9 David Lauer. Food sovereignty movements explicitly recognize the importance of women in agriculture. Via Campesina<\/a>, the 70-country coalition of farmers, other food producers, and land-based people, has made challenging gender inequity a central goal, both within the coalition and in the global food system. Via Campesina has hosted three international women\u2019s assemblies, led campaigns challenging gender-based violence, hosted trainings and exchanges for women, and committed to integrating a gender analysis into each of its program areas. Internally, it now requires that one woman and one man from each region participate in the international coordinating committee. It has set a goal of having 50 percent of delegates in all committees and conferences be women. It challenges its member organizations to ensure that women play an equally significant role in all leadership structures.<\/p>\n Juana Ferrer is a member a member of the International Commission of Women of Via Campesina. She is also a member of the board of the National Confederation of Women Campesinas (CONAMUCA) in the Dominican Republic. Here she discusses women\u2019s role as protagonists in changing the global food system as well as the food sovereignty movement itself.<\/p>\n The contributions that women gave to constructing the international campesino [peasant farmer] movement, and to confronting the agricultural and economic model: it\u2019s a contribution from below, from communities. We as women have a very spiritual and very political commitment that has been passed down to us by our ancestors \u2013 a commitment to better conditions for our families, our community, our people.<\/p>\n One very important thing for us is valuing our responsibilities, because it\u2019s not the same when a woman goes out to struggle: we have to make breakfast for the children, make coffee, clean the house, see if Grandmother is doing well. The men go out anywhere they want \u2013 around the community, outside the country.”<\/p>\n In the early 90\u2019s, in the process of building the Via Campesina movement, women\u2019s participation \u2013 especially at the international level \u2013 was almost invisible. Women came in with all their history of responsibility in [social] movements, but that wasn\u2019t reflected in decision-making. A lot of the compa\u00f1eras that started with the movement were pregnant \u2013 imagine that. A lot of us had to give the most we could in political work while nursing our children. It\u2019s the double burden of raising family and doing political work. Some people might think that\u2019s marvelous, but the level of sacrifice each of us had to make was very big. In the course of it, we women have gained more of a place in our houses, in our families, in our communities, and in our organizations.<\/p>\n In some countries, like the Dominican Republic, our struggle, our debate, our alliances with other movements have achieved a reform of the agrarian code. Previously, women only had access to the land when the husband died, and then only if there wasn\u2019t a brother in the family. Since passing this law, women are equal to men in access to land, credit, and other resources. Clearly there\u2019s a problem in applying this law; generally speaking, campesinos and campesinas have little access to land, but women have least. One important statistic is that only 1% of productive land with access to water to grow food on is in the hands of campesinos and campesinas. The rest is in the hands of big producers, transnationals, politicians, government functionaries. But women are much more discriminated against in the application of the agrarian reform law in application.<\/p>\n At the international level of Via Campesina, one achievement has been the recognition of women\u2019s rights to access to land, to fight for an agrarian reform that benefits men and women, that respects our natural resources.<\/p>\n Food sovereignty is another of the most important issues that we work on. We in Via Campesina assume that food sovereignty is our right as peoples. It involves access to resources, the ability to produce the food that we need to support our people, the ability to decide what we want to produce. The women are present in that struggle. Participation of women in the seed campaign of Via Campesina has been really important because we\u2019ve historically been promoters of agriculture, the ones who saved seeds.<\/p>\n We have an International Commission on Women, which shares responsibility with men to work toward gender equity. In the past, only women assumed that responsibility. We had a Commission on Gender, but all the rest of the commissions \u2013 agrarian reform, food sovereignty, human rights, and others \u2013 were comprised solely of men. Now on the coordinating committee of the Commission of Women, we are nine men and nine women. But what we have struggled for is not equality in numbers, but equality in participation and decision-making.<\/p>\n You have to respect the people\u2019s culture, but you also have to work so that that culture implies real possibilities of life. We have been able to unify our strengths as women, and also plant the struggle against machismo and other things that oppress us as a responsibility of the men and women of Via Campesina.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Next:<\/strong> Resources on gender and food<\/a><\/p>\n Image credit:<\/strong> IRRI Images<\/a> via photopin<\/a> cc<\/a> <\/p>\n Download the Harvesting Justice pdf here<\/a>, and find action items, resources, and a popular education curriculum on the Harvesting Justice website<\/a>. Harvesting Justice was created for the US Food Sovereignty Alliance, check out their work here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Read more from Other Worlds here<\/a>, and follow us on Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a>!<\/p>\n Copyleft Other Worlds. You may reprint this article in whole or in part. Please credit any text or original research you use to Tory Field and Beverly Bell, Other Worlds.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Women produce 60 to 80 percent of all food, both as subsistence farmers and as agricultural wage laborers. They are the primary providers for the majority of the world\u2019s 925 million hungry people, obtaining food, collecting firewood and water, and cooking. And yet they have less access to land and the resources necessary to grow on it than their male counterparts. Inequitable distribution of land, labor, and resources leaves farming women triply burdened by work: in the fields, in the home, and in society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":15429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13],"tags":[18,920,6325,6326,6327,6328,6329,2873,6330,929,4010,1697,8512,6345,6331,1447],"yoast_head":"\n\n
\n<\/p>\n<\/a><\/h3>\n
Women and the Food Sovereignty Movement<\/h3>\n
\nTo learn more about women and the global food system, see the following resources and groups:<\/p>\n\n