WUNRN
WOMEN
& THE RIGHT TO FOOD – DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN – WOMEN & FOOD
SECURITY – MULTIPLE RESOURCES
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/AdvisoryCommittee/Pages/RightToFood.aspx#discrimination
This
Study and Report by the esteemed UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee - http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/AdvisoryCommittee/Pages/AboutAC.aspx
was
published in 2010, but note the issues on Discrimination Against Women &
The Right to Food, and noting Rural Women. Many of these gender and food
issues are every bit as relevant today, midway in 2015.
|
Report of the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee - Study on discrimination in the context of the right to food, including identification of good practices of anti-discriminatory policies and strategies |
Advance Edited Version |
Gender
Excerpts:
II
Discrimination in the Context of the Right to Food
D.
Discrimination Against Women
31.
The intersection between women's rights and the right to food provides a rich
overview of a number of interrelated dimensions of
discrimination against women related to access to land,
property and markets, which are inextricably linked to access to education,
employment, health care, and political participation. On a global scale, women
cultivate more than 50% of all food grown. Women nonetheless account for 70 per
cent of the world's hungry and are dispro-portionately affected by
malnutrition, poverty and food insecurity. Governments are not living up to
their international commitments to protect women from discrimination, as the
gap between de jure equality and de facto discrimination continues to persist
and resist change…….
___________________________________________________________________
Women
in Agriculture: Closing the Gender Gap for Development – FAO – 2010-2011
http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/i2050e/i2050e.pdf
Women’s
Rights & The Right to Food – December 2012
http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/officialreports/20130304_gender_en.pdf
Gender
Equality & Food Security – Women’s Empowerment as a Tool Against Hunger –
2013
http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/otherdocuments/20130724_genderfoodsec_en.pdf
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Website
of the Current UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Ms. Hilal Elver
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Food/Pages/FoodIndex.aspx
Report
of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food to the UN General Assembly 2014
Access
to Full Report - http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/69/275
and click on UN language translation of choice
Women and the Right to Food
26. Although traditionally the role of women has been a part of the agenda on the right to food, the Special Rapporteur believes that the empowerment of women and the protection of their rights should be placed at the centre of the policymaking process on the right to food. Specific programmes and policies should be developed to empower women as agents of change. That means ensuring that they are granted equal access to resources, such as land ownership or tenure, water and seeds, and financial and technological assistance. The empowerment of women should not be limited to rural areas, but should also be extended to urban women, women from indigenous communities, those living in refugee camps and undocumented migrants. In the agricultural sector, policies tend to be “gender blind or gender sensitive in failing to address some of the main obstacles women face. Moving towards gender transformative policies will require major additional efforts on the part of States.
27. Patriarchal norms often control the distribution of household resources, including food and income. As such, women and girls are often the last to receive food within the family setting. Such blatant discrimination can have a devastating effect on women’s nutrition, which in turn leads to a reduction in learning potential and productivity and increases reproductive and maternal health risks. As a consequence, children are also severely affected. It is increasingly recognized that malnourished women are more likely to give birth to underweight children, resulting in stunting and other nutritional disorders.
28. In general, food and nutrition security policies continue to treat women primarily as mothers, focusing on the nutrition of infants and young children or pregnant women, rather than addressing constraints on women’s economic and social participation. Teenage mothers, women without children and women of postreproductive age with specific nutritional needs are generally not considered within those policies, and this must change.
29. As farm labourers, vendors and unpaid care workers, women are responsible for food preparation and production in many countries and regions throughout the world and play a vital role in food security and nutrition. However, women and girls continue to be disproportionately affected by poverty and malnutrition. Women in rural areas are particularly affected, as female-headed households continue to grow, exceeding 30 per cent in some developing countries, with women owning only 2 per cent of agricultural land and with limited access to productive resources.7 In many low-income countries, women are the backbone of the rural economy and 79 per cent of economically active women in the least developed countries consider agriculture as their primary source of income. Agrarian land re form legislation often discriminates against women by entitling only men over a certain age to land ownership while women’s entitlement only applies in cases where they are household heads.8 Such discriminatory practices prevent women in many countries from asserting their economic independence and being able to feed themselves and their families.
30. Investing in rural women has been shown to increase productivity significantly and reduce hunger and malnutrition.8 According to FAO, women are responsible for 50 per cent of world food production, mainly for family consumption. The majority of rural women are “invisible” field workers on family plots. As a result, they have no recognized independent status as farmers and their work is considered as secondary both in the family and in society. In sub-Saharan Africa, only 15 per cent of landholders are women and they account for less than 10 per cent of credit and 7 per cent of extension services. According to estimates, policies that address gender inequalities could, conservatively, increase yields on women’s farms by 2.5 to 4 per cent. Those statistics emphasize women’s key role in agriculture, not only in ensuring the well-being of individuals, families and rural communities, but also in relation to overall economic productivity and sustainable development.
31. Article 14 of the Convention on the All Forms of Elimination of Discrimination against Women should be used as a guiding tool by States. In the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security, endorsed by the Committee on World Food Security in May 2012, it is noted that gender equality is at the core of all reform efforts. The Voluntary Tenure Guidelines also contain special provisions for improving gender equality in both formal and customary systems, for instance through amending discriminatory inheritance and property laws. The Special Rapporteur will review State policies with reference to the Guidelines, highlighting examples of good practices that encourage access to land for women and other vulnerable groups.
32. Women in many parts of the world are confronted with other discriminatory policies and societal norms that prevent them from accessing their fundamental right to adequate food and nutrition. Limited access to education and adequate public health care, as well as early marriage and pregnancy, domestic violence and unequal employment opportunities impose restrictions on women’s mobility, decision making power and control over the family income.10 Migration as a result of natural disasters, climate change and conflict has also had a disproportionate effect on women, particularly those living in rural areas and among the urban poor.
33. There is also a need for the new global development goals to address structural transformation in relation to the existing global systems of power, decision-making and resource-sharing as a means of achieving women’s rights and gender equality in relation to food security. That includes enacting policies that recognize and redistribute the unequal and unfair burdens of women and girls in sustaining societal well-being and economies, which are intensified in times of economic and ecological crises.
34. The fact that women are also considered as the primary caregivers, in both rural and urban settings, adds an extra dimension to their responsibilities within the household. While rural women often shoulder the burden of a heavy workload in addition to their care duties, urban poor woman face different challenges relating to assuring adequate food and nutrition for their family. For a range of economic reasons, poor urban women are increasingly relying on less nutritious processed foods. The Special Rapporteur intends to work with relevant stakeholders to address concerns related to the food issues facing different countries as a result of a dietary transition from traditional diets to processed foods high in fat and sugar, including the concerns addressed by her predecessor (see A/HRC/19/59
35. States must recognize the need to accommodate the specific time and mobility constraints on women, given their role in the “care” economy, while at the same time reconstituting gender roles by adopting a transformative approach to employment and social protection (see A/HRC/22/50). The Special Rapporteur will endeavour to promote greater awareness of the guidance provided by general comments No. 16 (2005) on the equal right of men and women to the enjoyment of all economic, social and cultural rights and No. 20 (2009) on non-discrimination in economic, social and cultural rights of the Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, which relate to discriminatory practices against women.