Gender perspective in sustainable land management
Here I allow myself to share in this forum some ideas-reflections about the relationship of women and the use and sustainable management of land; I start by saying that the sustainable use and management of the land is everyone's responsibility, in that rural women can play a leading role as long as they are able to occupy a place in the family and in society that allows them to develop their human capacities and develop skills and competencies to promote environmental and ecosystem care.
The theme proposed for this forum merits a paradigm shift in the face of understanding the environment, the ecosystem and the role that human beings women and men play as part of it.Integrating two strategic issues for sustainable development such as the gender perspective and environmental management implies generating a thought that allows us to understand the complexity of the man-nature relationship and how it should be mediated by values such as respect and ethics.Let's start by making the relevance of the soil visible as a finite and non-renewable natural resource that fulfills various functions in the ecosystem and in the environment, it is the natural seat for production (Burbano, 2016), it is the source of nutrients for plants in order to produce food and biomass in general; Soil depends directly or indirectly on more than 95% of world food production, therefore, soil degradation is one of the biggest problems that threatens food production on the planet.
Soil is the largest carbon sink in nature, the fixation of carbon by the soil, misnamed "carbon sequestration" or "carbon sequestration" - prevents CO2 from going into the atmosphere, since this is one of the greenhouse gases that promote climate change.The relationship of human beings with the soil represents one of the greatest threats derived from the relationship of "modern man" with the planet through their conceptions and management style, a situation that in 2002, generates the term " Anthropocene ”, to refer to the current era of Earth's history, when human actions are driving with great force, environmental changes, many of which are undesirable for an overpopulated planet, increasingly hot, with intense felling of the forests and unfortunately, with soil degradation. However, there is also hope, when these challenges become opportunities to reinvent and overcome the current situation (Burbano, 2016).
Gender equality defined by UNESCO as "equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities for women and men, and girls and boys" means that rights, obligations and opportunities do not depend on sex with that they were born, gender equality means that they take into account the interests and needs of both women and men, recognizing the diversity of different groups of women and men.Relations between women and men play an important role in human, social and economic development; they have to do with the way they are developed, as well as the evolution and transformation of the values, norms and cultural practices of a society; which, in turn, determine these relationships. In fact, they are relationships that evolve over time and that influence a matrix of socio-economic, political and cultural factors. Changes in the combination of these factors can affect them in a positive or negative way (UNESCO, 2012).
The relationships and roles that women and men play in society also determine how they relate to the ecosystem and the environment, have to do with education, culture and opportunities to participate in the workforce that in the rural environment it translates into participation in agricultural activities closely linked to land use.Participation in the workforce is essential for the social and economic empowerment of people and their communities that offers them more options and resources, as well as greater autonomy to live the life they want.Women play a fundamental role in land management through their participation in family farming (Chiappe, 2005; Ballara, et.al., 2012), this role is documented in various investigations that coincide in identifying the sexual division that occurs in the performance in this activity and the invisibility of the work they performed. Specifically, women's activities are considered to help men and are included in the work carried out by men or heads of household.Among the activities carried out by women in the countryside are agricultural activities selling small-scale products and household chores that may be in addition to their own, the service they provide for other families; they also perform family care activities such as food preparation, child and elderly care, laundry, firewood, water collection, etc; - When there are temporary hiring in the homes, women, in addition to fulfilling their responsibilities in agricultural production, must also guarantee the conditions (food, laundry, house cleaning) so that those who are hired can fulfill their work.
Women participate in the entire process of food production from planting to harvest, but this participation is considered as support for men; the artisanal or almost artisanal processing of food for the sale and distribution of these. According to the study on the situation of rural women in family farming in five countries in Latin America (Chiappe, 2005), the activities assigned to them generally in the productive area of the agricultural sector need qualities conceived in patriarchal cultures to women by the established role both in socialization and in relation to obligations in reproduction.Women have qualities that allow them to participate in agricultural activities such as the “ability to perform repetitive and routine tasks, the ability to perform several tasks at the same time, the ability to associate work with their responsibilities in the field of reproduction, bringing their children with them for the farm ..., due to the responsibilities they have in the domestic sphere, their availability to perform temporary jobs ..., greater availability for the execution of some tasks that require attention to detail, as well as the permanence in a awkward position ..., acceptance of a remuneration relatively lower than the payment given to men ..., greater docility ... ”(Chiappe, 2005: 5).
From the two-dimensional analysis of the activities described above, the sexual division of labor is evidenced in which there is a lack of recognition of the contribution of women as well as distribution in the domestic activities culturally assigned to them.It is observed that although the participation of women during the last three decades has increased both in agricultural activities of land use and in different tasks, gender inequalities remain considerable.
While it is estimated that women represent more than 40% of the active population, they continue to encounter invisible barriers in terms of income and salaries and access to managerial positions, and are very likely to be overrepresented in low-income economic sectors. productivity and / or in the informal economy.The soil is the main element of ecological structures and synthesis of the state of the ecosystem and as such its proper management is essential for the success of other environmental policies. It plays a fundamental role in the sustenance of society and people; therefore, its degradation affects the welfare of the population.
Conservation and sustainable land management are essential to achieve the well-being of the population and is interrelated with the success or failure of numerous public policies, including those related to the agricultural, mining, housing, urban development and water sectors drinking, industry and commerce, transportation and health, among others. Additionally, sustainable land management is essential to consolidate peace processes in countries or regions that have been victims of the armed conflict.The role of women in the use and management of land is related to the processes of family transformation in general in society; For example, in Latin American countries the process is slow, in terms of the consideration of gender equality, of more democratic power relations between the couple and the formation of children, in modifying the stereotypes of the traditional roles of men and women. women, among others, in rural families these transformations are even more distant.
The gap between cultural changes at the social level and the structural transformations of the family is greater in rural families.The preponderance of the authority of the father, motherhood as a central aspect of women's identity, the submission of children to authority and the presence of machismo in the patterns of socialization and cultural relationship, are the aspects that are still strongly supported in family structure and organization.
The new generations are stressed in the processes of family socialization, the processes of formal education, which strengthen this type of relations and the discourse of public policies and cultural change, which promotes relations of equality and democratic patterns among those who decide to form new families.
On the other hand, rural youth appear in the midst of the processes of anchoring new social representations of the rural world and yet decisions are made for them on a daily basis; which on the one hand anchors them to a rural world without expectations for them and on the other encourages them to know new directions without forgetting their culture and rural environment.
The vision of the future of young people contains this double tension.The increase in the years of schooling, a sign of important transformation in the rural world, must be oriented to higher quality processes and social policies in that sense, must overcome the exclusion contained in their own rationality and mediate real inclusion processes to the new ones generations and allow them to find more development opportunities in their own rural environment.Social and political participation in the rural world today is very small and this appears consistent with its traditional structure in which the participation alternatives focus on traditional roles and strengthen sexist and unintegrative cultural patterns.
The process of incorporating women into work in the rural sector has been carried out from the logic of their contribution to the family and not from their own development as a person or subject. In this sense there is also a tension in the new generations, that reaching more schooling and higher education, they can make a difference with the women who preceded them, but on the other hand the same education ties them to the traditional model of subordination to the world of men , based on asymmetric relationships, rather than real democratic and egalitarian patterns.In this sense, the new generations seem to keep in tension, the traditional family vision and the scenarios of modernity, marked by the capitalist model, which promotes the more individualistic perspective, where the individual subject weighs, above the affirmation of a us.
Finally, I consider that the main limitations based on gender are cultural, educational and public policies that not only lead to mental models about the role of rural women as a family member but also in the role they play in the home economics and land cultivation, land use and management; These limitations are generated by unequal gender relations including discriminatory policies and norms that hinder the sustainable management of soils and contribute to their degradation.
Practical solutions and approaches that could help overcome these barriers include raising the level of formal education not only in women but in the new generations of children and young people, implementing public agriculture and rural development policies that improve living conditions and that allow the development of the field linked to local development, which generates attractive scenarios in agricultural activity in such a way that women, young people and the same men see that cultivating the land is a promising activity for their present and for their future.
Sustainable land management policies must be comprehensive policies, articulating rural development, social welfare and human development policies, which include education, training and awareness strategies for sustainable land management, environmental education policies, which are inclusive, not only with the communities, but with their different members, women and men, boys and girls in environmental education activities; it is necessary to educate in a systemic vision of the environment and of the integral formation of the human being in order to strengthen the participatory processes, the installation of technical capacities for the conservation and the sustainable use of the environment, including the soil, beyond its conception merely productive.
Mylene Rodriguez Leyton
Teaching researcher
Nutrition- Dietetic program,
Food and Human Behavior Group,
Metropolitan University, Barranquilla- Colombia.
Master in administration research emphasis,
Specialist in administration of public health services,
Nutritionist - Dietitian
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References
Burbano-Orjuela, H. (2016), Suelo, servicios ecosistémicos y seguridad alimentaria. Rev. Cienc. Agr. Julio - Diciembre 2016, 33(2):117-124.
Chiappe, Marta B. (2005).La situación de las mujeres rurales en la agricultura familiar de cinco países de América Latina. Asociación Latinoamericana de Organizaciones de Promoción al Desarrollo.
Ministerio de Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible de Colombia. (2016). Política para la Gestión Sostenible del Suelo. Bogotá, 2016. http://www.minambiente.gov.co
Ministerio de Salud y Protección Social Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Alimentación y la Agricultura. (2015). Las mujeres campesinas: su gran aporte a la agricultura familiar y la economía productiva. Junio 2015.
UNESCO. (s f) Igualdad de género, Manual metodológico- indicadores UNESCO de cultura para el desarrollo. https://es.unesco.org/creativity/sites/creativity/files/digital-library/cdis/Iguldad%20de%20genero.pdf
Prof. Mylene Rodríguez Leyton