User:Khan 129/sandbox

EDITING WIKIPEDIA ASSIGNMENT – GENDER AND FOOD SECURITY

	First of all, considering the how crucial the “gender and food security” issue is for women particularly in developing countries, we decided to make this section as a separate page. We plan to give a hyperlink and a short summary to the “gender and food security” sub-section in the existing “food security” article.

	The existing “food security” article is too long to bring attention to “gender and food security” subsection. In addition, when we review the talk page of the article, we realized that there are some projections to edit the complete article and to shorten the “gender and food security” sub-section, which is quite extensive in comparison to the entire article. We have already mentioned our intent to edit the “gender and food security” sub-section and make it as a separate page to the talk page.

	According to the FAO, the widely accepted World Food Summit (1996) definition reinforces the multidimensional nature of food security and includes food access, availability, food use and stability. In the existing article, we realized an excessive focus on “availability” and other elements are quite under-developed.

	In line with the recent changes in the article, we decided to take these 4 elements as our departure point and structure the article as follows. (We are currently in the process of creating more striking and relevant sub-headlines) On the other hand, we realized that the existing subsection of “gender and food security” mainly relies on liberal perspective; therefore, we plan to bring attention other perspectives.

	Availability — women as food producers: These include access to land; access to inputs, technology, and services; and access to markets.

	Access – women as food consumers: These include access to employment and fair work conditions, unpaid work, social and economic programs such as cash transfer programs, credit schemes, public initiatives.

	Utilization – women as food managers in households: These include women’s nutritional status as an input to child nutrition and girls, biased nutritional distribution within households. (There is a need to consider the overlap with the “women” section of the malnutrition article).

	Stability – women affected by exogenous shocks: These include financial crises, climate change, increase in food prices.

	While elaborating these sub-sections of our article, we are planning to address to global policy responses as well as regional and national initiatives.

References

"Women, Food Security and Agriculture in a Global Market Place" International Center for Research on Women

ADB, FAO. 2013. “Gender Equality and Food Security: Women’s Empowerment as a Tool against Hunger”

Agnes R. Quisumbing, Lawrence Haddad, Ruth Meinzen-Dick & Lynn R. Brown. 1998. “Gender Issues for Food Security in Developing Countries: Implications for Project Design and Implementation”. Canadian Journal of Development Studies

Agarwal, Bina. 2012. “Food Security, Productivity and Gender Inequality”. https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?publicationPid=uk-ac-man-scw:163107&datastreamId=FULL-TEXT.PDF.

Ajani, Olubunmi Idowu Yetunde. 2009. „Gender dimensions of agriculture, poverty, nutrition and food security in Nigeria“, IFPRI

De Schutter, Olivier. "Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food" Human Rights Council, Twenty-second session 24 December 2012

MDG Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Progress Chart 2010

Mehra, R. and M. Hill Rojas. 2008. “Women, food security and agriculture in a global market place”

Parvin, Gulsan Ara. 2012. “Role of Microfinance Institutions to Enhance Food Security in the Climate Change Context: Gender based analysis of rural poor community of Bangladesh”, CGIAR

Quisumbing et al. 1995. “Women: The Key to Food Security”, The International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, D.C., August 1995

Rao, Nitya. 2006. “Land Rights, gender equality and household food security: Exploring the conceptual links in the case of India”, Food Policy, Volume 31, Issue 2, April 2006, Pages 180–193

Sarapura, Silvia. “Innovating Agriculture through Gender Lenses” http://www.academia.edu/254531/Innovating_Agriculture_through_Gender_Lenses

Spieldoch, A. 2007. “A row to hoe: the gender impact of trade liberalization on our food system, agricultural markets and women’s human rights”, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Geneva

My contributions to the Gender and Food Security Page:

I have elaborated on the constraints that women have to encounter when it comes to access to finance.

Access to Finance
Most financial services in rural areas are directed towards households, and the male members usually receive credit and insurance via development agencies. Another issue is that women are employed as mere helpers without any substantive decision making power within rural farming families, rather than entrepreneurs who should have access to credit. Legislation and local customs hinder women's access to and control of assets that can be deemed as collateral such as land or livestock, by lending institutions. It is less likely for a women to own land, even if their families own it, and they are also less likely to control land, even if they formally own it. Moreover, since there is bias in control over assets, livestock which is of a high-value is usually owned by men, whereas women mostly own low-value animals such as poultry. Such a system works against women as it offers lower security through their low-value livestock, and proves to be a serious hindrance for women to access credit due to lack of security. Another constraint is that lower literacy levels among women hinder their ability to communicate and understand the information that is communicated to them in writing, which in turn limits their understanding of complex financial products that are being offered to them.

Policy issues
Previously ignored, the accommodation of gender in agriculture is crucial for development policies in developing countries. Researchers, aid donors and policymakers are witnessing how important the role of gender is in agricultural programs, and how it can be utilized to improve productivity. Hence, there is a strong need to tackle issues that affect women, and to employ the expertise of women’s groups as competent collaborators in improving agricultural productivity. According to the World Bank's Gender in Agricultural Sourcebook, women make up more than 50 percent of the labour force, and are in involved in three-quarters of food production in sub-Saharan Africa, but most development policies are gender-blind, and failure to include the role of women as producers further exacerbates the situation.

The Food and Agricultural Organization’s (FAO) report titled State of Food and Agriculture 2010-2011, and the World Bank’s World Development Report 2012 illustrate women’s input in the area of agriculture in developing countries. FAO’s report focuses on the urgency with which the gender gap needs to be closed when it comes to agricultural resources, education, extension, financial services, and labour markets that women are denied access to. Moreover, it highlights the need for increased investment in labour-saving and productivity enhancing mechanisms, along with better infrastructure to enable women to engage in more productive activities that encourage women’s involvement in fair, flexible, and efficient rural labour markets.

The World Development Report 2012 strongly emphasizes that closing the gender gap will lead to improvements in productivity, and identifies areas where policies can address the issues related to gender gap such girl’s education, excessive female deaths, decreasing poverty gaps between men and women, improving women’s access to economic opportunities, pushing women’s agendas into the public sphere, and discouraging the spread of gender inequality onto the future generations.

Key developmental organizations and aid donors are now including the gender dimension to their programmes, and to their programme monitoring structures. For example, FAO’s gender strategy, found in the FAO Policy for Gender Equality 2013, includes assigning 30 percent of FAO’s operational work and budget at the country and regional levels to targeted, women-specific interventions by 2017, and to disaggregate all data in every FAO statistical databases by sex. Another example is the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index, developed by the US government’s Feed the Future programme which aims to decrease poverty and food insecurity. The index assesses different indicators of women’s empowerment, and compares scores produced by these indicators over a period of time to evaluate if empowerment is produced as a result of Feed the Future, which runs in 19 focus countries.

Policy proposals
To decrease the gender gap in agriculture, policies and programs should not only be focused on improving productivity and livelihood of women, but should also play a role in empowering women in their households and communities. Women are often denied access to tangible assets such as land, irrigation, tools, technology, as well as non-tangible assets such financial, human and social capital.

Land
The legislation surrounding land inheritance would benefit from reforms that are aimed at supporting women’s property rights. For example, the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 2005 is amended to remove provisions that are deemed to be discriminatory towards women. However, such reforms must be addressed with caution since customary land rights and succession practices are strongly implemented in rural societies, where the practice may not be gender neutral. Hence, policymakers should incorporate this factor and ensure that efficient mechanisms are in place to ensure that the law is implemented equally across all areas.

Tools and technology
Access to technology and tools is essential in improving the role of women producers, because in some cases women do not possess the financial means to purchase tools while in other cases, they may not be socially permitted to own or use tools. Gender transformative policies regarding this issue should incorporate women’s needs when designing policies.

Microfinance
Rural women often rely on microfinance for credit, but this mechanism can be modified to meet other needs such a way of making and receiving payments, such as through mobile phones, or allow women to be involved in markets for purchasing inputs, and selling their produce. Such a system is crucial for women who live in societies where their mobility is restricted.

Agricultural expertise
Gender blind policies should also address an important barrier, which is access to agricultural advisory services for women. Transformative policies would include female experts or a group based delivery mechanism that incorporates the social stigma of private interaction with the opposite sex. Such a policy would reinforce the notion of women as farmers, as well as meet their needs for information.