Women’s rights

Women’s rights

Introduction

While many women globally are food producers, almost all women are feeding the world as “food finders, makers and feeders […] of men, families and communities.”[27] Women play a key role in livestock rearing, in protecting forests, rivers, lakes, seas, and in fisheries – from net weaving and fish catching, to fish trading and processing.[28] Women make invaluable contributions to the protection and regeneration of nature in food systems by producing, preserving and increasing popular knowledge about domestication of plants and animals, nutrition, genetic improvement and conservation of ecosystems.

Yet women continue to be distinctly and disproportionately affected by hunger. The prevalence of food insecurity at ‘moderate or severe’ and ‘severe’ levels, is higher among women than men globally.[29] Women are largely rendered invisible in food systems, with their work going widely unrecognized. Their experiences are underrepresented and erased from food policies, research and data. In many cases, women’s food and bodily autonomy are limited by discriminatory laws or patriarchal social structures. Socially-constructed gender roles make most women carry the disproportionate responsibility of the unpaid care work or “care economy”. In many instances, women are the only ones responsible for maintaining households, raising children, preparing food, and taking care of sick and elderly relatives.

Women’s experiences in food systems are not only shaped by their gender, but also by their age, race, disability, caste, class, and sexual orientation, all of which can individually and cumulatively pose as a barrier to the realization of their human right to food and nutrition (RtFN). Nevertheless, women continue to resist, organize, mobilize, and actively engage in transforming food systems.

Key figures on women in food systems:

States’ obligations

Women’s rights are an inalienable component of a holistic understanding of the RtFN and their realization is indispensable for healthy and sustainable food systems. States have the obligation to ensure that public policies do not violate human rights, and work towards non-discrimination, including of gender. States also have obligations to take targeted and concrete steps to identify and remove any barriers to the equal enjoyment of the right to food. To eradicate hunger and malnutrition, it is vital to recognize women’s work, understand, and address the links between women’s, girls’ and children’s rights, including their sexual and reproductive rights (SRR), and the human right to adequate food and nutrition.[30] States should also develop multi-sectoral strategies that move towards substantive equality for women by compensating for the differences, disparities, and disadvantages afflicting women in the realization of their right to food. States parties to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), should pursue, by all appropriate means and without delay, a policy of eliminating discrimination against women, including gender-based violence against women. This is an obligation of an immediate nature; delays cannot be justified on any grounds, whether economic, cultural or religious.[31] States Parties to CEDAW must also eliminate discrimination against women in the field of employment.[32] International human rights instruments, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and related policies require states to ensure the protection and realization of women’s rights in all areas – from property ownership and freedom from violence, to equal access to education and equal representation at all levels of government.

List of key words

  • Meaningful participation
  • Violence against women / gender-based violence
  • Child marriages and pregnancies
  • Care work and unpaid work
  • Access to justice
  • Women in markets
  • Women and education
  • Equal pay for equal work
  • Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR)
  • Access to and control over productive resources
  • Maternity protection and breastfeeding
  • Women human rights’ defenders
  • Indigenous women
  • Dalit women
  • Women of color
  • Migrant women
  • Sexism and Patriarchy
  • Intersectionality
  • Discrimination
  • Women’s traditional knowledge
  • Gender-disaggregated data
  • Safe working conditions

Main instruments

International

– Nº 34 on the rights of rural women

The CEDAW General Recommendation No. 34 on Rights of Rural Women provides a set of comprehensive and rights-based recommendations for addressing discrimination against women, in particular in relation to their right to food and nutrition, which is explicitly recognized in the context of food sovereignty.[33] In explicitly recognizing the right to food and nutrition in the context of food sovereignty, it implicitly seeks to address the social and political configurations around power over food that particularly affect women.

– Nº 16 on unpaid women workers in rural and urban family enterprises

– Nº 13 on equal remuneration for work of equal value

– Nº 35 on gender-based violence against women

– Nº 26 on women migrant Workers

Regional

 

Guiding Questions

General situation and policy framework

    • What is the percentage of women and girls suffering hunger and food insecurity where you live? What is the percentage of women and girls suffering from anaemia, malnutrition and obesity?

  • All women face some type of violence and discrimination. Some may even face double or triple discrimination due to other parts of their identity, such as class, caste, origin, ethnicity, and age. For example, indigenous women and girls in Guatemala are amongst the most affected by malnutrition.

  • Disaggregated data is key to expose how some groups may be marginalized, sometimes in hidden ways.For example, Indigenous Peoples face historic and structural discrimination in many countries, and women even more so due to their.

  • Nearly all states have ratified the CEDAW Convention. “Incorporation” means that it has been integrated into national law. Even though only ratifying an instrument does not automatically change women’s and girls’ situation on the ground, you may refer to these explicit and binding commitments that the state has made when doing policy and advocacy work to demand accountability.

    • Do national right to food and nutrition laws and policies include a gender perspective? For example, do they include provisions to combat gender discrimination or ensure meaningful participation of women as rights-holders?
    • Which accountability frameworks and legal remedies exist for right to food violations? Are recourse mechanisms accessible for women?

  • Of the 1,451 candidates running for 147 seats in the National Assembly in Mali in 2019, 427 were women. This is equivalent to 29.44% and is close to the 30% representation rate set by Law 2015-052/ of December 18, 2015, which establishes measures to promote gender in access to nominative and elective positions. This is a clear progress compared to the 2013 legislative election where they represented only 13.67% of all candidacies.

    • Are women and ethnic minorities adequately represented in state institutions at the central, regional and local level? Can women participate meaningfully in decision-making processes concerning their right to food and nutrition?

  • Due to socially-ascribed roles, women undertake a big part of unpaid care and social reproductive roles. This includes cooking, cleaning, and caring for the sick and elderly. In some countries such as Colombia, there are national surveys and systems that measure the time spent and economic value of unpaid domestic work and care. For instance, in Colombia, unpaid domestic work and care represents about 20% of the country’s GDP. Food provision is the unpaid work for which women spend the most time (34.6%). According to the National Time Use Survey, between 2016 and 2017 in Colombia, women’s participation and share of time for food provision represents 74.4%, whilst the proportion of time that men spent for this activity was 24.9%. Food provision is one indicator which enables us to visualize the sexist problems that persist in food systems.

Access to natural resources

  • (see module on Food Sovereignty)

    • What is the percentage of women owning land? Is this data available?
    • Are there laws that give priority to women farmers and fisherfolk in the allocation of public lands, fishing grounds, and forests?
    • Do existing laws/policies on the economic and political drivers of environmental destruction and climate disruption, such as deforestation, use of agro-chemicals, overfishing, conflicts, and war, highlight the exacerbated impact on women’s RtFN?

Sexual and reproductive health and rights

  • Child marriage is defined as a marriage between two people, in which one or both are under the age of 18. Informal unions where children under 18 live with a partner, as if they were married also fall under this definition. Child marriage is particularly harmful for girls, as they often may also get pregnant at a young age – both child marriage and early pregnancy affect their right to food and nutrition.

  • In other words: can women and girls decide whether to have sexual relations, and whether/how many children to get? Can they access free or affordable contraception methods? Is abortion allowed? If so, under which circumstances?

    • Do women have access to sexual and reproductive health services and other social benefits and protection measures? In other words, can women access maternity care, abortion services, nutrition and other health related services and facilities?

  • Women should not only be treated as mother and care givers, but human beings with their own rights. When they do give birth to a child, one of their rights is to be able to choose whether and how to breastfeed it – without interference from corporations seeking to sell products for profit, like breastmilk-substitutes, and with support of government policies.

  • Breastmilk substitutes can quickly interfere with or stop mothers’ ability to lactate.

Employment and work conditions

    • Are specific programs, incentives or policies in place to facilitate access to employment for women and in particular disadvantaged women, such as Dalit, indigenous, and rural women, and for gender and sexual minorities?
    • Does the existing labour legislation prevent discrimination or limitation in the access to workplaces for pregnant women or workers who are over a specific age?
    • Do women have a right to maternity leave? Do working conditions allow adequate free time to rest and breastfeed at work, and take into account family and social values.

  • Women have the right to be free from exposure to hazardous chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, and any toxic chemicals related to food production to ensure their reproductive health, and the health and wellness of their children.

    • What is the statutory minimum wage in the country? Is there a difference in the average wage between men and women?
    • Do workplaces have sexual harassment policies in place? Do women workers feel comfortable reaching out to these complaint mechanisms if they experience sexual harassment at the hands of their supervisors or other workers?
    • Do workplaces, especially factories, provide crèches or nurseries for children?
    • Are there specific laws in force that give special credit facilities to women, especially smallholder peasants, Dalit women, indigenous women, or landless women rural labourers, and that take into account the difficulties that they face to comply with standard requirements of the financial market due to discrimination?

Culture, social relations, and knowledge

  • Supportive laws might be in existence, but cultural and traditional norms can be a great hindrance to their implementation. Women in some countries, for instance, are often asked by health care providers if their husbands/father approve of their medical decisions before they are given assistance. This is not law but is considered a normal cultural practice. Furthermore, in many places societal norms require women to eat last and least, while “beauty ideals” may cause eating disorders detrimental to women’s health.

    • Do state and society give recognition to and value work carried out by women related to care, such as cooking, feeding, and breastfeeding and, in rural areas, care of non-human living forms (e.g. seeds, poultry, livestock, fish and flora)?
    • Does the state support efforts of redistributing care work related to cooking, feeding and looking after children, elderly and sick family members, often only taken care by women, so that men and boys also take responsibility for their due share?
    • Does the state offer humanitarian food and livelihood assistance in a manner that conforms to local beliefs, culture, dietary habits and preferences of individuals? How are nutritious needs of pregnant and breastfeeding women particularly being taken care of?
    • Do women peasants and workers enjoy full control over the money they earn and how it should be spent or do they have to share/completely hand over the amount to another (male) family member?

  • In many parts and communities around the world women have traditionally kept and exchanged seeds. In Malawi, for example, women produce, use, save, and share indigenous seeds. Seeds are promoted and shared among individual farmers, and through seed fairs. This empowers women “to have full control of seeds and what to grow at what time”, as compared to commercial seeds.

On intersectionality and discrimination

  • Women face different types of discrimination and violence – even more so, when other parts of their social and political identities are attacked. Intersectionality is a framework that identifies how overlapping systems of power affect those who are most marginalized in society. For example, indigenous, migrant, black women, and lesbians might face specific challenges. This is a significant and fundamental barrier to the realization of their right to food. Violence manifests in different ways: from physical and sexual violence, to structural violence such as poverty and food insecurity. The approach taken to address this adequately must go beyond equality and empowerment, to ensure women’s rights and self-determination.

  • The right to land is an internationally recognized human right, as enshrined in the UN Declaration for the Rights of Peasants and Other People in Rural Areas. As stated in Article 4, women should have equal access to land and other natural resources. However, in some countries, women do not have the right to inherit land, like in Guinea.

    • What kind of barriers exist for indigenous women, women of color and other ethnic, gender and sexual minorities in the realization of their right to food and nutrition? What laws and policies exist for these groups of women to access health services, social benefits, own land and control their own finances on an equal footing with other women?
    • What kind of barriers exist for indigenous women, women of color and other ethnic, gender and sexual minorities in accessing justice against right to food violations? Are there any laws or policies that offer them protection against this discrimination?

Where to find answers to the questions

  • You can check here if your state has ratified the CEDAW Even though only ratifying an instrument does not automatically change women’s and girls’ situation on the ground, you may refer to these explicit and binding commitments the state undertook when carrying out policy and advocacy work to demand accountability.
  • For gender-disaggregated data: You can check national/sub-national statistics offices or Ministry /offices for agriculture, Ministry of Women/Gender, Ministry for Labour or Social Development
  • For Gender Pay Gap
  • For wages and income: ILO Global Wage Database
  • For working conditions: ILO Working Conditions Law Database
  • For maternity protection: ILO Working Conditions Law Database
  • For examples of qualitative data: Without Feminism there is no Agroecology

Useful resources on the topic

Civil society organizations

Intergovernmental organizations

 

Women’s rights

Women agroecological peasants promote biodiversity and nutrition in Mali, Guatemala, and across the world

[34]

Our planet is on the brink of environmental collapse, while hunger, inequalities, and the dismantling of democracy are on the rise. Yet every day, women are building and advancing agroecological practices that are socially and ecologically just. As put forward in the 2019 Watch and by a paper by the Women’s Constituency and Working Group of the CSM, when applied with a feminist approach, agroecology can benefit women and communities on various levels. It can diversify work tasks and transform gender relations within communities, create spaces of equal participation and exchange, and strengthen women’s creative and collective work towards self-determination. It can also improve the health and nutrition of both those producing the food and those consuming it, by eliminating harmful agrochemicals and diversifying crops, fruits and livestock. Examples abound from all regions of the world. In Mali, as cited in the Watch, “women agroecological peasants who are part of the COFERSA cooperative (Convergence of Rural Women for Food Sovereignty), have raised awareness about the nutritional benefits of local foods (for example, fonio, millet and sorghum), and have encouraged consumers to switch from imported foods with low nutritional value, such as white bread, to their local products – also improving women’s access to markets. Interestingly, “[p]ride in local biodiversity, based on traditional knowledge and culture and manifested in local cuisines, is a driving force of their work”. Across the Atlantic, in Guatemala, the Association Qachuu Aloom (Mother Earth) is supporting women indigenous leaders to practice agroecology in 8 communities in Rabinal (Baja Verapaz Department) in the Dry Corridor. Through capacity-building, agroecology, and rescuing seeds and culinary culture, the fight against malnutrition is strong in this region. This process also encourages the use of renewable energy, the recycling of water, the defense of water sources, and stopping desertification.