CHAPTER 2.1: FOOD PRODUCTION AND FOOD SECURITY


Box 2.1.2: Gender-disaggregated experiences of food insecurity within households in Bangladesh


Women and men in the same households in Bangladesh were asked about their experiences of food insecurity.


The authors of the study concluded that the notion of “household” food insecurity is not particularly useful, given their findings that “certain food insecurity-related manifestations are not collectively or similarly shared by members of the same living space”. Some of the greatest differences between responses by adult female and adult male householders included:


% women


Personally could not buy snacks for family Personally took food on credit from a local shop Personally borrowed food from neighbours Reporting the family did not eat meat Personally ate less food


foods and home gardening. For example, official


statistical data provided to FAO reported that although 25% of Tuvalu’s workforce was employed in agriculture, no women were “economically active” in that sector (FAO 2011). However, it was also


reported that


Tuvalu’s female rural employment rate is 11.8%, but that women mainly work in the informal subsistence economy – a sector not recognized in the FAO figures (UN Women 2015).


Failure to include subsistence agriculture in national and global datasets might suggest that this type of agriculture is relatively unproductive and unimportant. In reality it provides millions of people with food security. The diverse types of food produced in subsistence systems contribute more to household food security and to women’s autonomy than do commodity crops, especially in periods of price and market instability (Sachs 2013). Subsistence agriculture should therefore not be seen as a “primitive” stage on the way to commercial agriculture; along with wild food collection and home food production, it needs to be accorded its real value, consistent with the growing emphasis on valuing “uncommodified work”, agroecological systems, and home gardening to feed households in developed countries (Bharucha and Pretty 2010). Most agroecological systems in the world are operated by networks of smallholders (Scialabba et al. 2014).


Access to land: Access to and ownership of land are of fundamental importance for food production and food security. Gender equality – or inequality – in land access and ownership are determined by who owns the land, who is the titular head of household, and


reporting “yes” 66.8 20.8 31.1 54.3 45.8


% men


reporting “yes” 20.5 41.5 13.4 38.0 37.2


Source: Coates et al. (2010)


who has decision-making power over the land and its uses (Akinboade 2008; Deere and Doss 2006; Deere and de Leon 2003; Agarwal 1994). FAO’s Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (2012) promote gender-equal tenure rights. These Guidelines recognize that women who are already socially and economically marginalized are particularly vulnerable when land tenure governance is weak.


A recent study on the gender dimensions of land governance transformation reviewed 14 empirical community case studies from several countries. It found that tenure reforms appeared to solidify men’s access to (and control of) land and other natural resources, even in cases where women were the dominant agricultural producers and male outmigration was increasing. This phenomenon is referred to by the authors as the “masculinization of rural space” (Archambault and Zommers eds. 2015).


There are significant gender gaps in many countries with respect to access and legal rights to land resources (FAO 2011). In more than half the countries in the world customary, traditional and religious practices discriminate against women even when statutory law guarantees them the same rights as men to own, control or use land. Thus cultural norms prevent full implementation of equal-tenure legislative efforts. In 4% of countries women explicitly have no legal right to own, use and control land (see Figure 1.4 in Chapter 1).


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