A blog by Dr. Theresa W Devasahayam, SI UN Representative (Bangkok) and Secretary of Soroptimist International of Singapore (SIS)
“The last century has seen an explosion in population. A pressing concern is the accessibility to food as more people are added to the world. Since the 1950s, the Green Revolution ignited a spark of hope by raising food production levels. The introduction of higher-yielding strains of plant and new fertilizers led to the improvement in crop yields. But there has been a downside to these technologies as they have led to a degree of environmental and politico-economic damage. It is in this complex matrix of factors that extreme hunger and malnutrition continue to exist in the world as population growth outpaces food production.
Currently, there are far more people than the physical capacity of the earth can provide for. In particular, developing countries continue to be mired by hunger and famine despite crop production globally having doubled over the last 50 years or so – the benefits of which have had an uneven reach across the world.
As of 2014, 795 million people are estimated to be chronically undernourished. Worldwide, children from a vulnerable group with 25 percent of them suffering from stunted growth. Moreover, nearly 40,000 children die as a result of malnutrition and accompanying diseases each day. United Nations estimates reveal that 67 percent of those in need of adequate and nutritious food all year round come from Asia.
Goal 2 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals aims to end hunger and malnutrition by 2030. The United Nations is concerned with the right to food, or access to food as a “right” by each and every person. How this might be achieved is through the removal of all barriers to food accessibility. Although this concept is understood as a moral obligation of all governments, it has not been legally implemented in most states, even until to this day. There continues to be millions who are unable to access food, and the reasons are twofold: whilst for some, there may be no food available, additionally, if food is available, it those who need it the most cannot access it.
In our quest to achieve food security for all, should women’s role be considered a key dimension? It is near universal that social and cultural norms posit women as the gatekeepers of food in the family – a role bound up with their place as primary caregivers; which has positive effects of safeguarding the well-being of members of the household. For that reason, women are more likely to report food insecurity than men.
However, women’s role in food security should not be confined to the notion that women “belong to the kitchen”; in fact, throughout history and in much of the developing world today, women play an integral role in food production as farmers, although they may be overlooked by census activities or ignored by government officials and development planners. Despite playing a central role in food production, they are often not perceived as workers, primarily because they are unpaid since farming has almost always been a family enterprise. Conversely, men are usually documented as workers because they are the first point of contact in the household by government officials. Moreover, they are usually acknowledged as heads of household, which gives them an edge over women.
When agricultural technologies such as new crop varieties, fertilisers, insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides were introduced to a community, often men and not women become the beneficiaries of such knowledge. In the same vein, development planners often assume that men are the ‘store houses’ of agricultural knowledge and that female farmers, if married, rely on their husbands’ guidance, although evidence has shown this to be otherwise. In fact, that development planners overlook women’s critical role in farming and treat farming as an activity of the public sphere executed by men alone, has led to female farmers facing a range of social and practical discriminations.
These are some of the themes discussed in the book entitled Ensuring a Square Meal: Women and Food Security in Southeast Asia. A compendium of ten chapters, the book seeks to uncover the various dimensions and processes relating to women’s role in food security in the family; women’s role in agriculture and food production; and state constructions of women’s role in food production in the family and community. Successfully reversing the taken-for-granted focus on food security studies which almost always focus on state interventions rather than the food producers themselves, the crux of the book is that women’s food provisionary role in the private sphere (that is, the home), and their role in food production as workers (in this case, on the farm), are not distinct from each other but rather these spheres overlap.
Focused mostly on peasant families and communities, the chapters examine a range of dimensions linked to women and food security, one of which is how women’s role in food security has played out at the family/household, farm, state, and regional levels, and how this role has evolved in the last few decades. That women are never released from their food provisionary role in household food security to pursue other interests, whether economic and social, is a recurrent theme. Moreover, the role of governments has also mattered in food security. While some may go all out to ensure food security to the most vulnerable through installing social protection programmes targeted at poor female-headed households, others have been found to embrace a greedy, developmentalist attitude which has led to the deprivation of certain groups most in need of access to land, not only to live off, but also to generate income. Moreover, existing food programmes driven by governments should be gender-sensitive so that women farmers do not face gender discriminatory practices.
Chapters in the book have also explored whether women have equal opportunity compared with men to land ownership, since land is a key factor for access to food. To the extent that women’s role in ensuring food security is critical, their empowerment is also examined as a factor for securing food in the context of the family. In this regard, women who have easy access to adequate and affordable foods are more likely to have a positive impact on the nutritional status of their children and, in turn, are able to prevent stunting among their children.
Throughout the book, poverty turns up as a key factor constraining accessibility to food. But the poor are handicapped in other ways: they are precluded from education and knowledge on nutrition that would help increase food security. Poverty was also found to lead individuals away from growing food to more stable forms of income generation, which paradoxically in some cases exacerbates food insecurity. Since farming is the principal source of livelihood among the rural poor including poor women, an underlying assumption is that factors impeding their access to agricultural resources and services and discouraging them from producing food crops have to be addressed if food security needs are to be met.
16 of October marks World Food Day. As we contemplate the theme for World Food Day for 2018: “Our Actions are our Future. A #Zero Hunger World by 2030 is possible”, let us recognise the central role played by women in the realisation of this target”.
Visit FAO State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018 HERE