The fisheries, aquaculture, forestry and livestock sectors are critical for sustaining
rural livelihoods and achieving food and nutrition security around the world. Yet each
of these sectors produces and sustains important gender and other social inequalities,
hindering people who rely on these livelihood systems from achieving their full potential.
Drawing on Njuki et al.’s (2021) Gendered Food Systems framework, we examine gender
gaps in relation to each sector, their implications for achieving multiple food system
outcomes, what has worked to reduce inequalities, and the potential these sectors hold
for advancing gender equality as an outcome in itself. We demonstrate that, despite
specificities across sectors, similar gender barriers limit the benefits women receive from
fisheries, aquaculture, forestry and livestock. These constraints, which occur at multiple
levels, include: the invisibility and undervaluation of rural women’s labor and their
disproportionately heavy labor burdens, limited and precarious control over resources,
norms that hinder women’s voice and influence in decision-making and governance, and
exclusionary institutions such as resource-user groups and extension and data systems.
We demonstrate that, to achieve transformative change in food systems, changes are
required in women’s agency, access to and control over resources, gender norms, and
policies and governance. Such changes can improve dietary outcomes, gender equality
and women’s empowerment, economic and livelihood outcomes, and environmental
outcomes. To conclude, we argue that closing gender gaps across these sectors requires
multipronged strategies that simultaneously engage these four change pathways to lift
structural barriers to inequality.