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INSEPARABLE: The Crucial Role of Women in Food Security
The paper is an overview of women's crucial roles in achieving food security at all levels: household, community, national and international. The author examines why women's roles, women's perspectives and gender issues remain "invisible" and why women are being continually left out of discussions, planning and policy making in the field of development and food security in particular. She highlights the strategies and actions being taken at various levels to transform this situation and the challenges that lie ahead.
NO FOOD SECURITY WITHOUT WOMEN
Food Security can be achieved at the household, community, national and international levels only if gender issues and the multiple roles of women in food security and the need for the empowerment of women are seriously recognized. This assertion is based on the fact that women play crucial, and often dominant, roles in the production and availability of food, in providing and obtaining access to food and in assuring the nutritional security of their families.
However, despite years of research, mountains of documentation and evidence linking the failure of development policies, programs and projects to the failure to take women's roles into sufficient consideration, it is still necessary to focus on the crucial roles of women in food security. The time has yet to come when women's key roles in food security are universally recognized and women's perspectives and gender issues fully integrated into development discussions, policies and planning.
This paper will give an overview of women's crucial roles in achieving food security at all levels: household, community, national and international. It will examine why these roles are still not recognized and why women's perspectives and gender issues are still not an integral part of discussions, policies and planning in the field of development and in food security in particular. It will also look at some of the strategies and actions being taken at various levels to transform this situation and the challenges ahead.
On Gender Issues
Before going into food security, it is important to under stand what gender issues are.
Gender refers to both men and women and more specifically to the behavioral, cultural or psychological traits typically associated with one or the other sex. Gender roles are those...