Gender and Sustainability: Learning from Women’s Farming in Africa

Tricia Glazebrook,Emmanuela Opoku

doi:10.3390/su122410483

Tricia Glazebrook, Emmanuela Opoku

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su122410483

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Abstract

Africa was the only continent not to achieve the 2015 Millennium Development Goal of 50% poverty reduction. This paper asks whether Africa will fare better in meeting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) addressing poverty and hunger by 2030. To answer this question, we examine a diverse body of literature and provide relevant longitudinal data collected over 13 years of field research. We find that ‘sustainable development’ is a failed concept immersed in the contemporary global economic system that favors growth over ecosystem stability and international institutions that undervalue women’s capacity for sustainability in their care-work as food providers. We examine barriers to women’s farming (climate change, gender bias, limited access to land, technology, finance) and provide examples of women’s innovative strategies for overcoming barriers in their care practices toward family and community well-being and ecosystem health. We find that Africa will likely repeat past failures without community-level interventions that empower women to achieve SDGs on poverty, hunger, gender equity, and ecosystem management. We uncover similar holistic thinking in women’s agricultural practices and scientific conception of ‘ecosystem services’.

Highlights

Africa was the only continent not to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of 50% poverty reduction by the goal of 2015 [1]
When the MDG global commitment expired, the Sustainable Development Goals [2] were launched by the United Nations General Assembly with the goals of ‘ending poverty and other deprivations’ by the year 2030, including eradication of extreme poverty and 50% reduction of all who live in poverty [3]
Data are taken from other UN entities, including the SDGs established by the UN General Assembly in 2015 and their MDG precursor, UN Women, UN News, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland), the Economic Commission for Africa

Summary

Introduction

Africa was the only continent not to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of 50% poverty reduction by the goal of 2015 [1]. We hypothesize that Africa cannot successfully achieve both its economic and food security needs without gender-inclusive approaches that meet the needs of women subsistence farmers. We test this hypothesis by investigating the role of gender in achievement of the SDGs with attention that is focal but not limited to SDG1 on poverty, SDG2 on hunger, and SDG5 on women and gender [2]

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