The agrarian transition and the ‘feminization’ of agriculture

This article discusses the significance of the so-called "feminization of agriculture" both to policymakers and to feminist theory. It first highlights the various meanings that, depending on the context, such "feminization" refers to. It then examines the situation of women as independent food producers. Though women play a greater role than ever as food producers. they face obstacles such that they are often relegated to a form of agricultural production that is characterized by its low productivity and that is geared towards own consumption.

Such homestead-based production can represent an important contribution to food security and deserves support. But it also presents the risk of confirming existing gender roles and it does not favor the economic independence of women ; nor does it truly expand women's choices.

The article also reviews the situation of women as farmworkers, which represents another manifestation of this "feminization of agriculture". Feminist theory has always been divided between the recognition of the specific position of women and their assimilation into existing institutional structures.

We confront a similar dilemma in the agrarian transition. The position of this article is that we should not have choose between supporting women's roles as food producers by taking into account the existing gender roles and the time and mobility constraints that women are imposed, or instead challenging those roles and ignoring those constraints, to make women more like men and ensure that they have the same opportunities as their male counterparts.

The constraints are real, and they will take time to be removed. As long as they subsist, we must ensure at least that the choices of women within the food systems can expand. Whether they decide to act within the existing gender roles or whether they seek to escape the constraints these roles currently impose on them, the choices they make in the various contexts in which they operate should not be choices by default: only by removing the constraints they face, and by shaping pathways towards alternatives to the current situation in which they face multiple barriers, can this be ensured.

UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food; Professor, Catholic University of Louvain; Professer, College of Europe (Natolin); member of the Global Law School Faculty, New York University; Visiting Professor, Columbia University. Olivier De Schutter earned an LL.M. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from University of Louvain (UCL) In 2002-2006, he chaired the EU Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights, a high-level group of experts which advised the European Union institutions on fundamental rights issues. He has acted on a number of occasions as expert for the Council of Europe and for the European Union.

Since 2004, and until his appointment as the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food in May 2008, he has been the General Secretary of the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) on the issue of globalization and human rights. His publications are in the area of international human rights and fundamental rights in the EU, with a particular emphasis on economic and social rights and on the relationship between human rights and governance. His most recent book is International Human Rights Law (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010).

Food Sovereignty: a critical dialogue, 14 - 15 September, New Haven.