The world does not lack food, but rather has a surplus of injusticesDelving into the patriarchal dimension of the globalized agri-food system is a requisite endeavour; as Vandana Shiva aptly observes, “From seed to table, the entire food chain is gendered.” This perspective urges us to view gender not as individual identities but as a “system structuring unequal power relations, distribution, voice, and rights,” as articulated in a recent publication by the Third World Network. Historically, in the sexual division of labour, food production has fallen mainly on women, who have harvested, cooked, processed, and served food from practices of care and diversity; however, women’s food economy has not been recognised as productive work and patriarchal domination that has been configured for millennia, but has been refined with the advance of corporate power, has denied them access to the means and resources to continue reproducing seeds, knowledge and food itself. These redefinitions have also undermined women's agency and their ability to be involved in decision-making processes, leadership roles and promote collective action. Understanding that women’s struggles are not unilateral, but rather intersect systems of inequality based on gender identity, age, ethnicity, class and other forms of discrimination, is fundamental to design effective public and mitigation policies in line with the current reality. While women play an instrumental role in producing 50% of the world’s food, their ownership of land remains at a mere 2%. This gender-based disparity becomes glaringly evident in the statistics related to hunger and malnutrition. A gendered divide is underscored by the fact that women constitute the majority among those suffering from hunger, outnumbering men by 150 million in 2021. Moreover, in animal husbandry, women own fewer animals, and usually small animals such as pigs or poultry. This skew not only robs them of economic empowerment but also aggravates global hunger. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) posits that granting rural women equitable access to resources would feed an additional 150 million people.
The intertwining threads of patriarchal capitalism, corporate control, unlimited growth and ecological degradation have fostered an unsustainable and unjust food system. The intensive livestock model usurps land and water that should be used to feed impoverished communities.Since women’s land has been more agrobiodiverse; denying women access to land erodes the basis of life. Historically, humanity has consumed over 8,000 plants, 3,000 of them regularly, many of them due to women’s interactions with them. The corporate agri-food system strips traditional knowledge and privatises it; it pushes economic, political, and cultural agendas that would be unthinkable without a patriarchal underpinning. In the face of women’s economies that have thought in terms of food, the agri-food system thinks in terms of commodities.
