Chapter Four

Women

Transforming Food Systems for Empowerment and Equity

Hazel Malapit, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Agnes Quisumbing, and Laura Zseleczky

Ensuring that women’s contributions to food systems are recognized—by their families, communities, policymakers, and society more broadly—and that women can make strategic choices about their involvement in food systems has benefits for all of society.

KEY FINDINGS

Women are actively involved in food systems in many roles, but their contributions are often not formally recognized, and they face obstacles to engaging on equitable and fair terms.
Together with changing diets, transformation of food systems toward more efficient and sustainable production processes and longer value chains offers new opportunities and challenges for women’s participation.

Transforming food systems for inclusion means not just ensuring women’s participation and access to benefits but also their empowerment to make strategic life choices.
Entrepreneurship is often touted as a key to empowering women, but evidence indicates that it may not empower women if limited to small, household-based enterprises.

KEY RECOMMENDATIONS

Increase women’s decision-making power and control over resources and assets (such as credit, land, training, transport, and technology) within households and communities.
Raise women’s voices in key processes such as negotiations with market actors, research decisions, and political processes.
Include women and consider women’s needs and preferences in the design of institutions, including property rights, financial institutions, and access to information and education.

Collect and evaluate more data relevant to women’s empowerment within food systems, including on capacities, motivations, and roles in value chains.
Encourage private sector initiatives to foster women’s empowerment, including adoption of standards for gender equity, women’s empowerment, and women’s leadership.
Ensure that food system transformations do not disempower women by increasing workloads or reducing decision-making power, but rather create a virtuous cycle of inclusion and empowerment to benefit women and men.

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