1. GENDER CONSIDERATIONS
FOR JUST AND STRONG
FOOD SYSTEMS
Lynn Brown
Director of Alliances and Policy, Innovation Policy and Scaling
HarvestPlus
September 1, 2023

2. History
Women the Key to Food Security Inequality!
 Access to land
 access to knowledge
 access to financial services
 more likely to be poor
 less access to food in the household
 buffers for their households

3. Progress - research
More detailed and focused, expanded issues
 land, water, trees - bundles of rights, common property, privatization of rights
 women’s assets, income flows, financial services, mobile phones,
information, social protection
 empowerment - concepts and measurement, WEAI
 human rights - education, violence against women including IPV, food and
nutrition security
 enabling equality - work, inheritance, legal rights, governance public and
private
 women are shock absorbers for their families - assets sold first, food
sacrificed,

4. Have we made progress - looks good?
Immunization?
 Donor Development Policies - commitment into action, gender less
than 2% of humanitarian assistance
 Gender based budgeting - key sectors like health
 Data - SDG monitoring only 16% of data is available for at least two
points in time,
 Data - IDPs only 14% documented sex and age, and only 25% of
those systematically for disasters. Average displacement lasts 9
years!
 Norms are powerful - even when it leads to death of women

5. SDG progress
Glass half full or half empty??
 17 SDGs - 7 have no gender indicators. SDG 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14,
 18 countries husbands can prevent wives from working, 39 countries no
equal inheritance rights, 49 countries no protection against domestic
violence
 750 million women and girls married before age of 18
 women are just 13% of agricultural land holders
 women do 2.6 times more domestic work
 23.7% of parliamentary seats
 gender pay gap is 23%
 women and children 14 times more likely to die in disasters

6. Women are resilience for their Families!
If we want more resilient households and food systems we need to
actually see women
Data, data, data
Commit, measure and monitor.