Women feed the world, a look at the food system from a gender perspective
Les dones duen a terme la major part del treball relacionat amb l’alimentació, però estan força invisibilitzades, controlen pocs recursos i solen tenir poc poder de decisió en la indústria i la política agrària i alimentària.
Throughout history, everything to do with feeding people has had a marked gender component. Today, in most societies women still take on more responsibility for the mental and manual work involved in providing and preparing food, one of the most important aspects of everyday care. To a large extent, women’s relationship with food makes up a significant part of their identity in profound, complex and often contradictory ways – as individuals, relatives, workers, activists or members of their communities. Although most food-related work is carried out by women, they are almost invisible, they control few resources and they usually have little decision-making power in the food industry and over agricultural and food policies. And, in spite of having historically taken on the responsibility of nurturing others, women often don’t feed themselves properly. In Barcelona, for example, 8.6% of households suffer from food poverty, a problem that particularly affects women. This coming 8 March, as part of a day that symbolises centuries of fighting against gender inequalities, we want to highlight some of the many meanings that come out of the relationship between women and food and highlight three groups that work in this area: Jornaleras en Lucha, Ramaderes de Catalunya and DAMES (Dones que Alimenten un Món en Emergència).
The link between food and women has many dimensions, which are often complex and contradictory. Women’s role in the provision of food at home, the productive work they do in the agri-food industry, and the impact of patriarchy on women’s bodies and, as a result, on their relationship with food, are just some of the facets of this complex relationship on which we would like to shed some light in this article.
Planning food shopping, financial management, food supply, planning meals, cooking, serving, washing dishes, feeding animals… Women are generally the ones who have always undertaken the work involved in feeding families or communities. According to some recent reports on the distribution of household chores, 70% of food-related work is carried out by women. Just like many other reproductive and socially necessary tasks historically performed by women, this daily work that is essential for sustaining life has been rendered invisible.
It is therefore interesting to note that, although women have always been in charge of this work in their private lives, until recently a woman working as a chef or head cook in a prestigious restaurant was a rare occurrence. It is therefore important, on the one hand, to be able to show new appreciation for these invisible and everyday tasks and the time spent on them while, on the other, highlighting the inequalities in this area and stressing the fact that they are equally applicable to all genders. It is also very important to emphasise all the experience-based knowledge generated and accumulated over time by grandmothers and women in the form of recipes and food or culinary tips. Who hasn’t wondered at some point how their Grandma always managed to make such perfect rice? Who hasn’t begged their aunt to let them have the recipe for that amazing stew that takes them back to their childhood?
On the other hand, although food is seen as a pleasure, women’s relationship with it has often been fraught with problems, affected throughout history by the pressures of the beauty standards of each era. A modern example of this is the discrimination and mockery currently linked to fatphobia. Women – particularly in Western societies – feel under pressure to force their bodies to conform to the prevailing ideas of beauty. According to the Association Against Anorexia and Bulimia, 90% of people suffering from these eating disorders are women. The same organisation also points out that, according to a survey conducted in 2020, 34% of girls between 12 and 16 have been on a diet at some point. Food and fashion media and advertising have a significant role to play in this relationship, because they perpetuate a standard of extreme thinness in women that does not match the diversity of real-world shapes and sizes.
Feminising the food system and making it more environmentally friendly: three examples of women’s struggles
In the face of the traditional male-dominated image of work in the fields, various projects and groups highlighting women’s contribution to the agri-food sector have emerged in recent years. They are reclaiming and highlighting occupations – such as shepherding and farming – that are disappearing as a result of the growing industrialisation of our food system. They advocate a green model that is more environmentally sustainable and leads to decent working conditions.
“We are women, we are farmers, we are shepherds, we are mothers, we are someone’s partner, and we are united.” This is the letter of presentation forRamaderes de Catalunya, a virtual network of around fifty female shepherds who want to highlight women’s role in the fields, promote the value of local products and change society’s consumption habits.
“Our work is based on animal welfare and respect for our natural environment. We keep our animals under an extensive and semi-extensive grazing system. In other words, they are grazing animals. This means that we are managing the territory, helping support farmers and reduce the risk of wildfires,” explains Ramaderes member Múria Baucells. “We want to move away from industrial production because we believe it to be linked only to financial benefits, not to people and territories. We want to ensure fair trade, trade that is carried out from person to person and with a local connection between our work and consumers.”
In 2020, the group published an interactive map of up to 35 livestock projects driven and/or led by women. The map provides a description of their products and services, as well as contact details. “We believe in a world with equal treatment. Women have been systematically treated as though they were invisible, and we want to explain that, hidden behind many projects, are women carrying out very important and necessary work,” notes Baucells. The members of the group communicate through a WhatsApp group where they share their everyday concerns and support each other. “It is a way of enriching each other,” she concludes.
Another very visible feminist struggle of the last few months involves the female day labourers of Huelva, Andalusia. Low wages, seasonal work, a lack of healthcare, sexual violence, the inability to form trade unions, a lack of decent living conditions, breaches of the collective agreement… The list of risk and vulnerability situations to which these women are exposed goes on and on. “On your first day of work, they make you sign a set of rules forbidding you from even talking to the people you work with. They also punish you if you fail to comply with the productivity list, they threaten to kick you out, they shout at you… Many workers take anxiety medication to help them withstand the pressure under which they work. The management can do whatever they like with us without any consequences whatsoever,” explains Ana Pinto, the spokesperson for the group. According to data provided by Jornaleras en Lucha, 80% of workers in the fields of Huelva are women. They complain that the big employers take advantage of the vulnerability of village women, who are completely financially dependent on this model of agriculture, and of the female workers arriving from Eastern Europe and Morocco who are hired in their country of origin. “We are supporting this industry, lining the pockets of a small number of people and helping people feed themselves. And, in spite of all this, we are invisible”.
They believe that, in order to reverse their situation, a new Agricultural Reform needs to be promoted, a decent collective agreement with employment rights and mechanisms to ensure compliance, and the regularisation of migrant workers. “This would be a milestone for migrants’ human and employment rights. It would also have an impact on other workers’ employment rights because, once we were all under equal terms, they wouldn’t be able to threaten us with dismissal simply on the basis that there’s someone else willing to do the same job for less money,” adds Pinto.
Jornaleras en Lucha, however, goes even further in its claims. The group reports that the current intensive farming model exploits not just the day labourers themselves but also the area’s natural and water resources. “We must move towards agroecology. Our reservoirs and aquifers are dry, our wetlands are constantly shrinking, and the soil is wrecked by pesticides. It’s a disaster,” reflects Ana Pinto.
DAMES is the acronym for Dones que Alimenten un Món en Emergències [Women Feeding the World in Emergencies], a platform that promotes the collective construction of new narratives around food through creative and participatory processes. It is a group of ten women from different disciplines with food-related jobs and links to research and activism. In the context of the pandemic, they decided to look for places to meet and carry out actions to give visibility to the role of women and how they feed the world.
“We want to highlight the significance of food from the point of view of the daily experience of women – because we are the ones who feed the world – and how a different world can emerge through us and our experiences in relation to food. We want to fill social media with “invisible” food by using our own bodies and experience to subvert the idealised and twisted images of sustainable food and replace them with real experiences that show the transformative power of food in our lives, our regions and the entire planet,” explains DAMES member Marta Pons.
The group’s first project is La Fototeca, a photo-participatory process aimed at highlighting the gender perspective and care in the sustainable food narrative. The project will explore, through various participatory action / research sessions carried out in focus groups of women with different profiles (in collaboration with the group Ruido Photo), the key messages that need to be included in the sustainable food narrative and the real images and data that represent them. “Just like in other fields, women play an invisible role in food. We claim this essential role for driving ecosocial transitions at the service of life and the planet, particularly in the defence of food as a universal right, as well as other fights for fundamental rights such as energy, housing, air and water,” adds Pons.
The project’s working sessions will start the week of International Working Women’s Day, building up to a large-scale exhibition within the framework of Sustainable Food Week in October 2021.
*Picture by Anna Anchón.