Food Systems and Gender: The Groundbreaking Role of Rural Women

Gender Inequalities Exacerbate Food Insecurity in Rural Areas

There is enough food produced today to feed each person on Earth. Yet, approximately 900 million people were food insecure in 2022.^[1] While societies have developed strategies to mitigate food insecurity, safeguarding the right to food for every person on Earth remains one of the most urgent challenges of our time.^[2]

Food insecurity and extreme poverty often go hand in hand. Further, extreme poverty is primarily a rural phenomenon, with up to 80 percent of the extreme poor living in rural areas.^[3] Reflecting this connection, moderate or severe food insecurity affects approximately 33.3 percent of adults living in rural areas, compared to 26 percent in urban areas.^[4] Climate change exacerbates this situation, particularly affecting small-scale farmers due to their reliance on weather conditions to maintain their land and food sources.^[5] Gender inequality also worsens food insecurity, with women facing higher food insecurity than men in every region of the world, as shown by a gender gap of 2.4 percentage points in 2022.^[6]

Gender Inequalities                       

Gender inequality threatens women’s right to food, reinforces a vicious circle of poverty, and worsens food insecurity generally.^[7] Research shows that "the more gender inequality there is in a country, the hungrier people are."^[8] While women grow much of the world’s food and prepare most household meals, they are more likely than men to be food insecure.^[9] Women’s agricultural work is often highly labor-intensive with low profit margins and limited access to value chains.^[10] Further, because women generally must adapt their food systems work to their heavy domestic and care burdens, their contributions are often unrecognized.^[11] Ultimately, the time they have available for paid work in food systems is reduced.^[12] Identifying inequalities among genders, while recognizing their household responsibilities, unpaid work, and participation, is critical to improve food security worldwide.^[13]

Gender inequalities exist at multiple levels of society, from households to legislative systems. At the household level, gender discrimination may manifest through a lack of decision-making power, or even physical abuse and other harmful practices.^[14] Within legislative systems, law and policy may create inequalities within education, income generation, and labor force participation. It is essential to consider how new crises, including climate change, worsen existing inequalities. Recent evidence shows that vulnerability to climate change is one of the main drivers of gender inequality, with existing income gaps between women and men in rural areas further widened by extreme weather events.^[15]

Reducing gender inequality is possible. About 57 percent of the current food security gender gap would disappear if women were provided with higher levels of education, enhanced access to full-time jobs, and higher incomes.^[16] In rural areas, women farmers must secure certain key rights as a priority, including land and water tenure rights, better access to seeds, extension and advisory services, and credit and market services.^[17]    

Despite women’s critical role in food production, more men than women own land globally.^[18] Detailed research by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) indicates that in half of all countries, women face low levels of legal protection in relation to their land rights.^[19] Today, nearly 40 percent of countries retain laws limiting women’s asset rights and ownership.^[20] These issues impede women’s ability to use and invest in land, denying women the right to generate higher incomes, access credit, and achieve other economic benefits. Advancing equitable policies and programs can reduce inequality and food insecurity. In Ethiopia, women’s land ownership increased by 20 percent following the launch of a land registration program in 1998. Today, more than half of all landowners in Ethiopia are women.^[21] Sharing these lessons of gender transformative approaches at scale is critical to tackling global inequalities.

Empowerment and Agency

Empowerment and agency are essential for promoting gender equality in agriculture. Secure land tenure rights enable women to take control of agricultural resources. With land ownership, women can make decisions about crop selection, farming methods, and resource allocation, enhancing their productivity and contributions to household and community food security.

Legal aid programs are one way to enhance the practical impact of more theoretical law reform through increased empowerment and agency. In 2013, Kenya’s Justice Project launched information campaigns and legal training on women’s constitutional rights to own land.^[22] While the legal text remained unchanged, the awareness program had a significant impact on cultural norms and legal expectations.^[23]

The results of the Kenya program were remarkable. About 21 percent of men participating in the program were more likely to recognize women’s constitutional right to own land than men outside the program.^[24]Meanwhile, women participants had an 84 percent probability of inheriting land, compared to 67 percent in the general population.^[25] Finally, girls within the project had a 39 percent higher likelihood of inheriting land, compared to only 3 percent for girls within the control group.^[26]Kenya’s success highlights the potential for multi-generational progress resulting from state-sponsored education initiatives.

Inclusivity and Investment

To feed a projected 10 billion people by 2050, food systems must become inclusive and well-funded.^[27] With 36 percent of women globally working in agrifood systems, it is critical to enhance inclusion and investment for rural women.^[28] Focusing on land rights and gender transformative approaches, as discussed above, is important in tackling food insecurity and gender inequality. Additionally, focusing on inclusivity and investment through social protection and collective training and empowerment programs is essential.

Social protection programs can be tailored to the needs of women engaged in small-scale agriculture to safeguard against economic shocks and bolster resilience. These programs offer crucial support compensating for income losses and facilitating agricultural adaptation. Evidence suggests that cash-based interventions for women improve productive assets, foster improved farming practices, and decrease reliance on casual wage labor.^[29] This is important as it enhances economic stability, increases autonomy, and fosters long-term sustainability by empowering individuals to rely on their own assets and skills, rather than precarious and often exploitative work arrangements.^[30]

Tailoring agricultural extension services and training to the gender-specific requisites of women farmers is key for gender inclusivity. As stated in a recent report by FAO, "information is not socially neutral, and specific attention must be paid to how and by whom information is delivered to specific populations."^[31] To increase women’s participation, training sessions should be arranged in accessible locations and accommodate childcare responsibilities.^[32] Increasing the representation of female extension agents and implementing peer-to-peer mentorship programs enhances inclusivity and adoption of best practices among rural women.^[33] It is also important to increase avenues for women to participate in off-farm pursuits. Such avenues include entrepreneurial ventures, such as processing and marketing basic agricultural outputs to higher value-added products. These initiatives diversify income streams and advance socio-economic well-being.

The Saloum Delta in Senegal provides a powerful example of the positive impact of inclusion and investment in women farmers. Persistent droughts have decimated coastal mangrove forests by almost 40 percent, threatening the existence of coastal villages and food supply.^[34] The Resilient Food System Programme, a collaboration between IFAD, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), and the Government of Senegal, promotes women’s agency by creating new opportunities, particularly for female farmers, while employing climate-adaptive solutions. Working closely with rural women, the community introduced oysters as a new crop, attached to the mangrove roots. This provided women farmers with the skills and investment to become agri-entrepreneurs producing a new high-value product. Holistic projects like this one can be scaled to create new industries benefiting local communities.^[35]

Conclusion

Despite their pivotal role in food systems, women continue to face disproportionate food insecurity. Enhancing food security and building resilient food systems requires a multifaceted approach prioritizing equality, redistributing power, and confronting social injustices. This needs to be addressed at both the national and grassroots levels. The indispensable role of women in rural communities underscores the urgency of adopting strategies that empower and uplift women. No person or country is immune from food insecurity – hunger is a global problem requiring a global solution for which half of the world’s population must be prioritized.    

 

Katherine Meighan is the Associate Vice-President and General Counsel of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) with over twenty-five years of international development experience. As part of the IFAD senior management team, she sets IFAD’s strategy to double its impact for the rural poor while scaling up climate adaptation, private sector lending and IT for development, with a focus on gender, youth, and nutrition. Prior to IFAD, she was Assistant General Counsel and Manager at the International Finance Corporation (IFC). She would like to thank Ms. Phoebe Bower, Legal Officer at IFAD, for her invaluable input and support with this article.

 

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[1] FAO, IFAD and WFP, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015. Meeting the 2015 international hunger targets: taking stock of uneven progress (Rome: FAO, 2015).

[2] FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023. Urbanization, agrifood systems transformation and healthy diets across the rural–urban continuum (Rome: FAO, 2023), p. 6-7.

[3] FAO, FAO framework on rural extreme poverty: Towards reaching Target 1.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (Rome: FAO, 2019), p. 6.

[4] FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023. Urbanization, agrifood systems transformation and healthy diets across the rural–urban continuum (Rome: FAO, 2023), p. 6-7.

[5] Alpízar Francisco, Saborío-Rodríguez Milagro, Martínez-Rodríguez M. Ruth, Viguera Bárbara, Vignola Raffaele, Capitán Tabaré, and Harvey A. Celia, "Determinants of food insecurity among smallholder farmer households in Central America: recurrent versus extreme weather-driven events," 2020.

[6] FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023. Urbanization, agrifood systems transformation and healthy diets across the rural–urban continuum (Rome: FAO, 2023), p. 6-7.

[7] Stanley Victoria and Lisher Jennifer. 2024. “What will it take for women to gain equal rights to housing, land and property”, World Bank Blogs, https://blogs.worldbank.org/investinpeople/what-will-it-take-women-gain-equal-rights-housing-land-and-property.

[8] Thembinkosi Ramuthivheli. 2023. "The relation between gender inclusion and food security," Galvmed, https://www.galvmed.org/the-relation-between-gender-inclusion-and-food-security/

[9] UN Women: In focus: "Women and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)." Last accessed March 19, 2024, https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/women-and-the-sdgs.

[10] Careevaluations, Food and Nutrition Security, Gender Equality Sector. 2022. Food Security and Gender Equality: A synergistic understudied symphony, https://careevaluations.org/wp-content/uploads/Brief-on-Gender-Equality-and-Food-Security-1.pdf. See also: FAO. (Undated). Gender and inclusive food systems and value chains. https://www.fao.org/gender/learning-center/thematic-areas/gender-and-inclusive-food-systems-and-value-chains/en#:~:text=Women%20comprise%2037%20percent%20of,gender%20inequalities%20and%20women%27s%20marginalization.

[11] For more information, please see: Careevaluations, Food and Nutrition Security, Gender Equality Sector. 2022. Food Security and Gender Equality: A synergistic understudied symphony, https://careevaluations.org/wp-content/uploads/Brief-on-Gender-Equality-and-Food-Security-1.pdf and FAO, The status of women in agrifood systems, (Rome: FAO, 2023).

[12] Careevaluations, Food and Nutrition Security, Gender Equality Sector. 2022. Food Security and Gender Equality: A synergistic understudied symphony, https://careevaluations.org/wp-content/uploads/Brief-on-Gender-Equality-and-Food-Security-1.pdf. See also: FAO. (Undated). Gender and inclusive food systems and value chains. https://www.fao.org/gender/learning-center/thematic-areas/gender-and-inclusive-food-systems-and-value-chains/en#:~:text=Women%20comprise%2037%20percent%20of,gender%20inequalities%20and%20women%27s%20marginalization.    

[13] CARE, Food Security and Gender Equality: A synergistic understudied symphony, August 2022. https://www.care.org/news-and-stories/resources/food-security-and-gender-equality-a-synergistic-understudied-symphony/

[14] Gavrilovic, M., Petrics, H., Kangasniemi, M. Changing rural women’s lives through gender transformative social protection. A paper on gender transformative social protection concepts, evidence, and practice in the context of food security and nutrition, (Rome: FAO 2023), p.7.

[15] FAO. The unjust climate – Measuring the impacts of climate change on rural poor, women, and youth, (FAO: Rome 2024), p. 25.

[16] Mane Erdgin., Macchioni Annarita., Cafiero Carlo. and Viviani Sara. "Why are women more food insecure than men? Exploring socio-economic drivers and the role of COVID-19 in widening the global gender gap." (Rome: FAO, 2023), p. 15. 

[17] Gavrilovic, M., Petrics, H., Kangasniemi, M. Changing rural women’s lives through gender transformative social protection. A paper on gender transformative social protection concepts, evidence, and practice in the context of food security and nutrition, (Rome: FAO 2023), p.7.

[18] Ibid, p. 75.

[19] This is based on 68 countries for which data was available, for more information please see: Ibid, p. 71, 75.

[20] Stanley Victoria and Lisher Jennifer. 2024. "What will it take for women to gain equal rights to housing, land and property," World Bank Blogs, https://blogs.worldbank.org/investinpeople/what-will-it-take-women-gain-equal-rights-housing-land-and-property.

[21] FAO, The status of women in agrifood systems, (Rome: FAO, 2023), p. 177.

[22] USAID, Enhancing customary justice systems in the Mau Forest, Kenya. Final report. (Washington, DC: USAID, 2013) https://www.land-links.org/wpcontent/uploads/2016/09/USAID_Land_Tenure_Kenya_Justice_Project_Final_Report.pdf

[23] Ibid.

[24]  FAO, The status of women in agrifood systems, (Rome: FAO, 2023), p. 178.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Ranganathan Janet, Waite Richard, Searchinger Tim and Hanson Craig. 2018. "How to Sustainably Feed 10 Billion People by 2050, in 21 Charts." World resources institute. https://www.wri.org/insights/how-sustainably-feed-10-billion-people-2050-21-charts.

[28] FAO. The status of women in agrifood systems. (Rome: FAO, 2023), p. xxvi.

[29] Boone Ryan, Covarrubias Katia, Davis Benjamin, Winters Paul. (2013). Cash transfer programs and agricultural production: The case of Malawi. Agricultural Economics, in Agricultural Economics, Volume 44, Issue 3, 2013.

[30] For more information, please see: UNHCR, An Introduction to Cash-Based Interventions in UNHCR Operations. (Geneva: UNHCR, 2012), p. 7 and Claire Simon, "Discussion Paper No. 31: Effect of Cash-Based Interventions on Gender Outcomes." UN Women, November 2019, https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/Library/Publications/2019/Discussion-paper-Effect-of-cash-based-interventions-on-gender-outcomes-en.pdf.

[31] FAO. The unjust climate – Measuring the impacts of climate change on rural poor, women, and youth, (FAO: Rome 2024), p. 47.

[32] Ibid.

[33] FAO, The status of women in agrifood systems, (Rome: FAO, 2023), pp. 174-175.

[34] Resilient Food System: Mangrove User Associations are critical partners in conserving Senegal’s coastal forests. https://resilientfoodsystems.co/news/mangrove-user-associations-are-critical-partners-in-conserving-senegals-coastal-forests

[35] Ibid at p. 160.