Issue: GENDER & WOMEN'S RIGHTS

Care work consists of essential activities to guarantee the life of people, living beings and the planet. It has been historically carried out by women, based on the sexual division of labor in a framework of patriarchal power relations, which also meant that it has been largely invisible or low status. Paid and unpaid care work has led to and reproduced discrimination, gender inequalities and violence.

Privilege and oppression are power dynamics that intersect in caregiving contexts and relationships. Race, class, ethnicity, and other social identities intersect with gender to shape experiences of caregiving. To craft genuinely caring politics, we must acknowledge that care work includes many aspects of life from the individual perspective of self-care to the care of households and communities.

What is Food Care?

Care work includes food care: for what we eat, how we eat, who eats and when.  

Food systems, like care work, also rely on interdependent relations. Rural women’s care work is crucial to food production, processing, distribution and access. This interdependence also raises questions around redistribution, autonomy, sovereignty over bodies, love, relations, resources and life itself. Food is an act of love. And so is care.

The corporate food system anchors this interdependence in unequal power relations, with harmful consequences such as the homogenization of diets, the loss of biodiversity and the exploitation of unpaid care work done by the vast majority of black, indigenous, peasant, fisherwomen and rural women.

Why should we care?

The current system of production, distribution and consumption of food and other goods overexploits the productive and reproductive work of women, causing deep inequalities and sickening human beings and the planet.  

Rural women represent one third of the global population but 36% of the agricultural labor force yet earn 20% less than men. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, more than 20% of agricultural employees in Latin America and the Caribbean are women. Also in that region, women spend three times as much time on domestic work and unpaid care compared to men. In addition, there is a significant gap between women in urban and rural areas, with the latter spending three to ten hours more on daily care work than women in urban areas. 

Hegemonic narratives around care in food systems fail to look beyond recognition of these facts and leave aside the redistribution and representation of the agency of rural and indigenous women who produce food. Likewise, food systems see food only as the act of distribution and supply, ignoring all the care work that is behind real peasant-produced food.

There is a strong link between informal labor and the marginalization and impoverishment of rural and indigenous women. They are considered the most vulnerable group in society, as they mainly work as unpaid laborers on family farms with low pay, hazardous conditions, and without social security coverage. They face multiple obstacles to independence and economic autonomy. In contexts of crises, rural and indigenous women are most affected by poor access to resources, services and information, as well as by the heavy burden of care work and discriminatory traditional social norms.

In the current context of multiple and interrelated crises, a radical transformation of industrial food systems and the urgency of a transition to just, healthy, sustainable, and violence-free food systems is crucial. The feminist agenda and the right to food and food sovereignty agenda need each other more than ever to face the magnitude of current challenges. Reciprocity and cross-pollination should be the hallmarks of the strategy ahead for both living beings and the planet. Food, care, self-care and community care must be at the core of a much needed paradigm shift.

How can we care?

Social movements and civil society can help to push forward the care paradigm by:

• Putting the human rights of caregivers at the center of the global care agenda.

• Raising awareness of care work around food by peasant, indigenous and rural women. 

• Collectively building action tools to position care in the political agenda.

• Generating processes of mutual care and self-care relationships.

• Advocate for the recognition and redistribution of care and domestic work, as well as remuneration and representation of care workers or caregivers.

For more information or media interviews please contact Amanda Cordova Gonzales at cordova-gonzales@fian.org 

Ahead of this International Women’s Day, we would like to draw attention to ways that women – whether Indigenous, rural workers or those enduring an occupation – resist and mobilise in the face of multiple, long-term crises. Existing patriarchal systems, structural inequalities and discriminatory laws have long stalled meaningful progress towards gender equality and women’s rights. For women living in crises such as conflicts, facing recurrent environmental disasters and cyclical financial shocks, the Covid-19 pandemic has come as an additional blow, severely impacting their right to adequate food. 

Conflict is a key and persistent driver of food system breakdown: more than half of undernourished people live in countries experiencing conflict. Extreme weather, economic shocks and climate change are also prevalent drivers of food crises and greatly affect food systems. Funding requirements for food security in humanitarian appeals rose to US$9 billion in 2020, up from US$5 billion in 2015. 

Crises manifest in different ways and take different forms. They can affect only particular groups in a population or bring destruction to entire nations. 

Marginalised communities, and specifically Indigenous peoples, have long faced a crisis of food insecurity, and in many parts of the world women and girls face a crisis of long-standing discriminatory practices that directly impact their food security. Women agricultural workers can face unjust working conditions that offer little job security, lower wages than male counterparts and no benefits for illness or maternity, all while being exposed to an often unsafe work environment. 

Even in wealthy countries in the Global North, Indigenous peoples often face extremely high levels of food insecurity. This is largely due to the impacts of colonisation, which include land theft, severely diminished access to hunting, fishing, and wild food gathering grounds, and the arrival and dominance of an entirely new colonial food system. In many parts of the world Indigenous women whose access to traditional foods has been severely limited must rely on expensive and often unhealthy, ultra-processed foods to feed their families. 

Caught in the quagmire of these multiple crises, women and girls continue to be the group distinctly and often disproportionately affected. 

In armed conflicts, for example, adolescent girls are 90 per cent more likely to be pulled out of school, and 70 per cent of women in humanitarian settings are more likely to experience gender-based violence (GBV). Quarantine measures during the pandemic have exacerbated domestic violence globally, and many women have been forced to prioritise unpaid care work and gendered domestic responsibilities. 

The rights of women are embedded in, and strengthened through several policy and international legal instruments, including the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The Framework for Action for Food Security and Nutrition in Protracted Crises (CFS-FFA) addresses the inequalities and vulnerabilities often faced by women and girls in crises that affect their food and nutrition security. The United Nations Security Council’s Resolution 1325 recognises and reaffirms women’s role in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace-building, humanitarian response and in post-conflict reconstruction. Additionally, adopted in 2019, the International Labour Organization’s Convention 190 is the first international labour standard to address the right of everyone to a world of work free from violence and harassment, including gender-based violence and harassment. 

Routinely, these policies and laws are poorly implemented – if at all. In many regions, women and girls are evicted repeatedly throughout their lifetime, and are systemically prevented from claiming rights to land for subsistence and livelihood. Even where domestic law aligns with CEDAW, local customary practices that deny women’s rights to land can in practice take precedence. 

Supporting women’s resourcefulness and resilience 

Despite these challenges, women and girls in crises are, by necessity, resilient and resourceful, and have a sea of knowledge that boosts peace-building and humanitarian efforts. Experience and research show that when women are included in humanitarian action their entire community benefits. Women are often the first responders to a crisis and play a key role in the survival and rebuilding of communities. 

In Palestine, women who have been dispossessed from their lands since 1947 have become agricultural entrepreneurs, building resilience and resistance to the ongoing occupation, closure, and apartheid system implemented by the Israeli state. 

This includes the saving, sharing and cultivation of traditional seed varieties. One Palestinian woman in the West Bank spearheaded the first and only Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, preserving and making traditional seeds widely available, while the Urban Women Agripreneurs Forum in the Gaza Strip save and share seeds to grow on rooftops and home gardens in Gaza’s densely populated cities and refugee camps. These activities not only help provide access to fresh, healthy foods, but is also a form of resistance against Israeli actions that threaten Palestinian farming culture. 

In many parts of Uganda, women have been able to survive financial shocks by becoming resourceful workers in the informal sector: as street food vendors, agricultural or fishing workers, and in any other capacity that allows them to have an income. As a result of their survival abilities and growing self-sufficiency, they have been accused of witchcraft and have been a target of ‘witch-hunting’. Such accusations have stripped them of their lands, homes, sources of livelihood and exposed them to acute social banishment. Against all odds, these women have mobilised and gathered support from local organisations, and are working to challenge these practices with advocacy and legal tools. 

Affected women and local women’s rights groups are also increasingly fighting the ongoing inheritance-loss crisis through legal and advocacy avenues. In India and several countries in Africa, training is being provided to measure the true cost of the losses that women endure through these discriminatory practices. 

Crises present the most unimaginable, unconducive living conditions and take a much bigger toll on women. We have seen how women continue to mobilise and become meaningful leaders of change and resistance, even during crises. 

Ahead of International Women’s Day, we remind governments, and all actors in humanitarian and crisis contexts, that aligning domestic law and policy to international standards is simply not enough. The rights that women have on paper must be reflected in their everyday lives. 

This can be best achieved by consistently monitoring on-the-ground outcomes in crisis response using a strengthened gender lens. It is also important that affected women are provided the opportunity to equally participate in decision-making, including for crisis response and ways to address root causes of crises. While the primary responsibility to ensure human rights lies with our governments, civil society and ordinary citizens can play a valuable role as eyes and ears throughout these crises. It is up to all of us to transition to a just, equal and sustainable world. 

This OpEd was first published in “Equal Times”