Gender and food security
They often work as unpaid family workers, are involved in subsistence farming and represent about 43% of the agricultural labor force in developing countries, varying from 20% in Latin America to 50% in Eastern and Southeastern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
[10] Typically, in most of the developing countries, a woman's use of land is restricted to temporary cultivation rights, allocated to her by her husband, and in exchange, she provides food and other goods for the household.
In order to reorganize post-colonial societies, SADC states have engaged in land redistribution and resettlement programs, ranging from temporary lease-holding to permanent property rights.
[14] Particularly in rural areas, the use of women's time in agriculture is often constrained by obligations such as fetching water and wood, preparing meals for their families, cleaning, and tending to children and livestock.
For example, in Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia women expend most of their energy on load-carrying activities involving transport of fuel-wood, water, and grain for grinding.
[3] Women tend to be engaged in the production of traditional and subsistence crops offering less opportunities to benefit from market income;[15] however, self-consumption might also be a conscious choice.
[16] Within the household women often have little decision-making power related to marketing and selling activities as well as over the spending of the money earned, although they often contribute considerably amounts of time to the production.
However, privatization of infrastructure services hindered rural women and children from escaping poverty traps which constrain their ability to sustainably produce food for themselves and for market.
The Center for Women's Global Leadership writes that "trade liberalization policies have increased their work burden and undermined their right to food.
"[25] Most financial services in rural areas are directed towards households, and the male members usually receive credit and insurance via development agencies.
Another issue is that women are employed as mere helpers without any substantive decision-making power within rural farming families, rather than entrepreneurs who should have access to credit.
[26] Legislation and local customs hinder women's access to and control of assets that can be deemed as collateral such as land or livestock, by lending institutions.
Income is either generated from market activity or granted by redistributive mechanisms in the form of government's social protection measure or community's solidarity.
[3] Many studies conducted during the 1980s suggest that women typically spend a higher portion of their income on food and health care for children than men do.
When a study interviewed people living near Lake Victoria, women typically considered their children as the first or second greatest expenditure, while men did not view them as a cost.
A research[48] on four indigenous ethnic groups in Bengal found that there was no significant difference in food security between the male and female headed households in these communities.
[1] Limited access to resources, increasing care and time burdens and less decision-making power for women resulting from gendered roles in society lead to differential experiences of and coping mechanisms for instability.
[15][54] Representing increasing shares of smallholders and working on marginal lands declining agricultural yields will be felt disproportionally by women as producers.
[3] Another reason for differential impacts is the distribution of labor within households: with climate change water and fuelwood scarcity as well as negative health effects on children and other dependents can put additional time constraints on females.
[54] Women often lack a voice in decision making at local and international levels, but climate change could also be an opportunity for renegotiation of gender roles and female empowerment.
[15][55] While women are not inherently more at risk from climate change and shocks, resource and other constraints can make them more sensitive to their effects and less able to adapt to them, increasing their vulnerability.
[15] High dependency ratios and discrimination, among others regarding employment, access to land, and social transfers make female-headed households especially vulnerable to rising food prices.
[61] Women are more likely to be displaced, the task of females in catching firewood has contributed to rape and equal access to food aid after crisis can be undermined by corruption, local militias or distances.
[15] Similarly, natural disasters, triggered by climate change or other factors, have been found to put additional care burdens on women post-disaster, while limited mobility and work opportunities outside of the home reduce their range of coping strategies.
One such urban agriculture project is Abalimi Bezekhaya, in Cape Town, South Africa, which provides training, manure, set-up and maintenance of an irrigation system, and R150 (US$15) to each participant.
"[63] Macroeconomic factors should also be taken into account, such as the emergence of neo-liberal capitalist policies imposed through the Washington Consensus which include Structural Adjustment Programs, austerity measures, and an emphasis on expanding export-oriented trade at the expense of small-scale producers and rural development.
FAO's report focuses on the urgency with which the gender gap needs to be closed when it comes to agricultural resources, education, extension, financial services, and labour markets that women are denied access to.
[67] Another example is the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index, developed by the US government's Feed the Future programme which aims to decrease poverty and food insecurity.
[72] Transformative policies would include female experts or a group based delivery mechanism that incorporates the social stigma of private interaction with the opposite sex.
[73] Gender-sensitive indexes such as WEAI are intended to aid governments, scholars, and organizations to make informed and educated decisions regarding food and gender policy in regionally specific agendas.
