المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

Dear colleagues,

Thank you for this wonderful discussion; I’ve been learning a lot by reading through your many insightful comments and am sure this will continue to be a very productive dialogue. Though I’m new in this space, I would like to contribute a few thoughts without (hopefully) echoing the contributions of others too much. These include 1) how one lens through which we might confront the root of gender inequality is by investigating our own assumptions that often get built into research questions and interventions; 2) the essential function of social policy in improving the quality of life for rural women; and 3) the intertwined role that conflict and climate change are playing and will play in the lives of many rural women.

Despite progress, there are clearly many challenges facing rural women and girls today. As highlighted throughout significant FAO publications, these challenges are evident through deficits in quality of life as well as productivity gaps caused by lack of access to productive assets and technology. Meanwhile, the skills and mindsets of women and girls in rural contexts are changing, as are those of the communities around them.

Whether our understanding of the needs and priorities of women in rural contexts is accurate depends very much on how we frame research questions, facilitate focus groups, and allow for the vast diversity of perspectives arising from the groups that comprise ‘women and girls’. As we seek to understand needs and priorities we should continuously interrogate the assumptions that might underpin our research or intervention design, because the questions we ask shape the answers we receive. Are our questions context appropriate? Do they rely on unfounded assumptions about the innateness of certain gender roles or stereotypes? Are we sufficiently accounting for intersectionality in our understanding of gender (whose voice is missing)? Most importantly, are we listening enough?

Tying this ‘at the root’ approach to interventions to ensure sustainability: FAO already brings the perspective of men and boys into interventions that seek to enhance women and girls’ access to technology and skills training; the support of an entire community is necessary for progress.  For example, in community in programs that seek to increase women’s access to Rural Advisory Services (RAS), women’s enhanced productivity through access to RAS is framed as a benefit to the entire family and wider community. To avoid the pitfalls of making women solely responsible for the unequal institutional context of patriarchal societies, capacity enhancing exercises must continue to be paired with ambitious interventions aimed at changing detrimental perspectives about women and work. If we continue to perpetuate a society in which women’s work is undervalued because they are women, regardless of what skills they employ and jobs they undertake, the mere act of women performing that work will lead to that work being undervalued.

To follow the thread of undervalued work- I would like to highlight the essential role of context-appropriate social policy and programs- particularly social protection, but also education and health systems- in enhancing quality of life for women and girls across the life course. It is essential that any intervention designed to enhance the lives of women and girls in rural settings be viewed within its existing policy ecosystem, particularly social policy, as this setting will determine whether and how women and girls can make use of enhanced access to resources or new skills.

Care burden was mentioned in this discussion as an example of an impediment to improvement in the quality of life for women and girls. Women and girls still provide the vast majority of care. Care is necessary work, but when it is undervalued it gets in the way of education, other types of productive work, and essential free time needed for physical and mental health.  Addressing care burden can take many forms depending on the needs and preferences of the community. It can mean the provision of childcare so that women can engage in economically productive activities, it should include interventions aimed at changing the undervaluation of care work, it can take the form of programs that allow people to be paid for the very difficult work of caring for loved ones, or can involve labor market regulation that is sensitive to the schedules and needs of those who provide care.

Other social protection systems can enhance quality of life for rural women and girls by reducing vulnerability to risk related to life contingencies, prevent engagement in activities that enhance short-term gain at the expense of more sustainable activities, enable women to leverage transfers as productive investments, or can intervene in labor markets to support the participation of marginalized groups. From a broader social policy perspective, universal health and education systems serve to decommodify- empowering women to access their rights to education and health regardless of employment or financial status, contributing to a supportive environment for women’s productive agricultural engagement, and an environment in which girls can prioritize education.

Social policies that are context appropriate are appropriate not just for the population but also for the policy environment. This means ensuring that the redistributive functions of social assistance and insurance programs are not undone by regressive taxation structures, or policies that disenfranchise or otherwise prevent women, girls and other marginalized groups from accessing their rights. Productive social policies complement agricultural polices to improve the quality of rural lives.

Finally, I would like to emphasize the intertwined role that climate change, conflict, and crises will play in the lives of rural women and girls. The uncertainty that climate change generates for rural livelihoods and the threat it poses in the form of increased intensity and frequency of natural hazards demands vigilance as well as adequate policy interventions that shape the way we engage in agriculture and our environment, and how we support those affected by disasters.

Changes in productive land and fears about resource allocation can lead to conflict. A primary concern will be to prevent conflict over land and resources from becoming violent conflict. However, many rural women and girls currently live in contexts of violence and insecurity. As many have pointed out, conflict and other forms of human insecurity affect men and women differently. For women, this often means targeted violence, a lack of legal protection systems related to violent crime, domestic violence/IPV, property rights, exclusion from labor and credit, burdens of labor from informality and fractured families, exclusion from education, and can weaken health and social services for women.  

Interventions in conflict or post-conflict settings can often fail to accurately understand the role of women and girls in conflict, and therefore fail to fully integrate them in the process of building a positive peace. Gender roles structure responsibilities, capabilities, access to rights and engagement with the post-conflict process, and failure to account for gender in this process can have implications for the rights and entitlements of women and girls in long-term development.  Post conflict contexts offer a brief window of time particularly receptive to transformative policy change. If leveraged, this can mean transformative policy gains for gender equality.

Thank you,

Liz