Across the globe, women have disproportionately fewer rights and access to land and property. Nonetheless, in some areas such as in Sub-Saharan Africa, women make up for most of the agricultural labor force . This discrepancy poses difficult challenges not only for individual households but to our entire food production system as women produce 60 to 80 percent of food in most developing countries and half of the world’s food supply according to a study conducted by the International Center for Research on Women in 2008. With this in mind presenters at the COP24 panel : Socio-cultural options to complement technical know-how to secure gender-equal land tenure rights urged us to go beyond gender neutral approaches and gender-blindness, and invest on women.
Why is gender neutrality problematic? Given the socio-cultural pressures and discrimination that women face, gender-neutral assistance programs are likely to not end on the hands of women. At the same time, many studies show that women-focused assistance and empowerment programs are much more beneficial for entire households and communities, one of their reasons being their contribution to the global food production.
As we address issues of mitigation on COP24, investments on sustainable agriculture and rural communities will be some of the biggest focuses. A great challenge, however, is to ensure that gender equity is not left out of the negotiations and implementation. To address this issue, Ana Carolina de Lima with Climate Resilient Cities talked about the importance of building capacity for policy makers, negotiators, and community leaders to understand gender perspective and to develop gender sensitive monitoring tools. Questions of developing male allies and partnerships were also addressed highlighting the fact that gender-focused solutions are not only women’s but truly community efforts.
“The voices of the women on the grassroots need to be heard” emphasized De Lima. Verona Collantes with UN Women also mentioned the importance of having community liaisons throughout all the implementation in order to collect primary data from the women that are being directly affected by climate change, and related socio economic pressures, and consequently include their perspectives and strategies in national adaptation plans and enhance the efforts of knowledge production and conservation.
Similarly, the alignment of the SDG’s, Human Rights and Climate Change action was emphasized as essential for a more holistic and equitable implementation on the national and local adaptation plans.
“There are no easy solutions and land and women have historically been sticky issues” said Gertrude Kenyangi, “but we have to invest in women because that has a triple down effect in communities and is part of smart investing practices.”