Abstract
The role played by women in worldwide food production and food security has reinvigorated debates about the recognition of women’s rights in the rural sector regarding better working conditions and the reduction of gender inequalities. In the 1980s, the social movement in Brazil restructured the politics in the agrarian sector by integrating farmers’ rights and women’s demands. Against this background, the objective of this study is to analyze, through the actors’ perspectives, whether and how the combination of public policies for family farmers affected the socio-economic and political empowerment of women. Our case study covers family farmers from traditional communities located in the Brazilian semi-arid. The results show that women achieved economic stability by participating in public food procurement programmes. In addition, access to cisterns released women from the daily work of collecting water. Women became more involved with political issues, increasing participation in institutions such as NGOs, associations and cooperatives. Among the negative aspects, the study found that the sexual division of labor increased within the household context, and, despite being fundamental for ensuring household food security, women still struggle to have access to the means of production.
Highlights
The movement towards gender equality has reinvigorated debates surrounding the role played by the state and citizens in the search for an equal society
We focus our analyses on the case of the rain-fed family farmers’ food system, situated in the Brazilian semi-arid, where fieldwork was conducted from October 2018 to January 2019
The reports that we used were mainly produced by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Brazilian Ministries of Agrarian Development (Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário, MDA) and Social Development (Ministério do Desenvolvimento Social, MDS), which provided information on food sustainability, right to food, food systems, food security, women’s empowerment and public policies for family farming implemented in Brazil
Summary
The movement towards gender equality has reinvigorated debates surrounding the role played by the state and citizens in the search for an equal society. Women are key actors in the food systems since they form about half of the worldwide agricultural workforce and are responsible for managing income and ensuring adequate nutrition for all household members [1]. The main demands of female agricultural workers were the recognition of the farming profession and the rights arising from this recognition, such as social rights (especially the right to full retirement pension and maternity wages). They requested the right to organize in unions, independent of the participation of their parents, brothers or husbands [3,4]
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