Women unleashing SMART power to transform agri-food systems
Gender inequality is often relegated to a challenge for countries far away from us.
The challenges of Indian women who do not have equal rights to education, access to land, financial services, and technologies. The difficulties of women being considered without equal respect, or all the women working informally, without decent pay or social rights in Asia and Africa. These are aspects that inevitably have repercussions throughout the global system and more acutely in the agri-food sector, where they are the main protagonists as I have already touched in my previous articles here and here.
Yet the real paradox of gender inequality is that it is a global plague, afflicting North and South equally.
In addition to Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nigeria, during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow last year, also Germany, Sweden, the UK and the USA raised their voices to foster gender strategies, ensuring more gender equity and investment funding to combat gender inequality as crucial components of their climate finance arrangements.
Here in the European Union, women are employed at a lower rate (67% of women compared to 78% of men) and earn less (almost 20% less per hour).
These inequalities also appear in leadership roles, with only 39% of the Members of the European Parliament being women and less than 10% of them in board chairs and CEO positions.
This data is crucial especially when compared with the global trend of women's participation in environmental protection ministries: “Parity in decision-making in environmental protection is exceptionally rare” as confirmed by the UNDP Global Report on Gender Equality in Public Administration.
The same is also true for Italy. According to the Gender Equality Index 2021, our country is currently 63.8 (out of 100 meaning complete gender balance) among EU countries.
THE VALUE OF HAVING WOMEN ON BOARDS
Despite how far we still have to go to make SDG 5 (Gender Equality) a reality, the value and capacity of women can be measured in several ways.
- Bring the agri-food system back to care and love
“Women are those who make the world beautiful and guard for it.” — Pope Francis
Care, kindness, love, fertility, nurturing, and attention to detail are intrinsic values that belong to women.
Women are those who naturally grow children, ensure unity within the family, and also for these reasons they generally care the most about food choices and nutrition of the household.
If growing food is firstly an act of love and care, it is not surprising then, that women all around the world comprise the majority responsible for post-harvest, processing, and storing activities in the agri-food system, and those who preserve and protect livestock in the field of pastoralism.
Applying the natural motherhood principle into food production is not only something needed today to overcome the current challenges of the agri-food system but also something completely natural, that has been studied and analyzed also in the scientific world under the phenomenon of eco-feminism.
- Foreseeing opportunities, stricter climate policies
When creativity merges with sensitivity the outcome is earlier foresight into new opportunities.
The increasing growth in women leading the agri-innovation market is clear proof that these aspects are part of the female DNA: from alternative proteins to food incubators, from high tech monitoring to reducing and repurposing food waste, food technologies are flourishing through female flair.
Equally, studies have started to point out the stricter relationship between climate attention and the presence of women. According to research published in the European Journal of Political Economy, there is a real connection between female national parliaments and stricter climate policies.
It is also for this reason that universities have begun opening “women labs” as places to welcome creativity, advance women leadership, and eliminate gender inequalities.
“Gender equality — like clean air — is a public good that benefits us all,” reports Shelley Correll, Faculty Director of the VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab at Stanford University.
- Building more solid networks
Being naturally projected towards cooperation, communication, listening, and sharing, the female potential towards capacity building and networking has been gradually gaining traction. We all know now how crucial networking is to generate more and new ideas, to analyze challenges from different perspectives, and to foster an ecological approach that is integral to all dimensions of life.
Studies confirm that there is a big difference between men’s and women’s networks: the former being more addressed to efficiency, instancy, and strategy, the latter being more empathic, listening, and therefore able to establish solid and stronger relationships, based on mutual trust and common interests.
So, instead of debating whether men know how to cooperate better than women or vice versa, what is important to emphasize is the fact that they cooperate differently and start from different values.
FEMALE IMPACT ON FOOD FOR EARTH’S HEATH
What would the world have been like without the feminine touch and presence?
Without any doubt, it would have been very different from what it is today.
We owe to Trotula De Ruggiero, the first woman doctor of the Salerno Medical School in the ninth century, the connection between human health, nutrition, and care of the environment.
It is thanks to Margaret Haney, wife of Ancel Keys, that we can now “label” the heritage from the Mediterranean philosophy “Mediterranean Diet.”
Evangelina Villegas, the first woman to be awarded the World Food Prize, studied and developed a high-quality corn protein that has become crucial to fight malnutrition.
Marie Maynard Daly, the first Black American woman to earn a PhD in chemistry, who contributed with her studies in the discovery of DNA and RNA.
Still today, the current scenario is populated by outstanding female scientists, visionary politicians, but also activists, and game-changers who are pushing the world towards more sustainable, resilient, and regenerative patterns.
Mariam bint Mohammed Saeed Hareb Almheiri is now the Minister of State for Food and Water Security but also Climate Change and Environment in the United Arab Emirates working hard to transform global food systems and to achieve food security.
Greta Thunberg is now a global symbol of youth activism in support of environmental needs and climate change.
Vandana Shiva, the living icon of agro-ecology and an undisputed Indian activist against monoculture and conventional agricultural patterns.
Melati and Isabel Wijsen, two Indonesian sisters known for their efforts to reduce plastic consumption in Bali.
But what impresses me most is seeing how women are an essential force, nudging food systems transformation. Their passion and expertise continues to push the needle towards sustainable innovation supported by their ability to create purposeful networks.
FoodTech Connect, founded by my great friend, Danielle Gould, a real pioneer leading the global FoodTech scene; Food for Climate League, a women-led nonprofit research and communications collaborative aiming at creating new food and climate narratives that democratize sustainable eating, was founded by Eve Turow-Paul; FoodTank, the global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters, led by Danielle Nierenberg; ICBA — International Center for Biosaline Agriculture the non-profit agricultural research center in Dubai working on “food security — water nexus” led by the scientist Dr Tarifa Alzaabi working hard to bring more women and girls into science**;** Bits x bites, an agri food tech VC based in Shanghai led by Matilda Ho who has been a pillar in leading the food system transformation in China; EAT, the global, non-profit dedicated to transforming the global food system through sound science was founded by Gunhild A. Stordalen; Thought for Food, the network that creates the necessary spaces for more resilient and inclusive food systems all over the world, was founded by Christine Gould; the UN Food Systems Summit led by Agnes Kalibata, the SUN (Scaling Up Nutrition) Movement, the global movement to end malnutrition in all its forms, is coordinated by Gerda Verburg, a great source of inspiration.
So celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls in Science is an opportunity to honour the incredible contributions that amazing women are making to the world, working together to create true prosperity.
In order to create truly resilient, fair, and inclusive agri-food systems, we need to return to the essential values of life, the universal values based on cooperation and mutual aid, on listening and empathy. We need to get back into the habit of educating ourselves about beauty, a powerful tool against fear. We need to promote new notions of prosperity, understood as widespread and universal well-being, aimed at collective regeneration, to be analyzed beyond the economic and financial lens. This also means taking care of natural resources, understood as common goods to be valued and protected, taking care of the individual, putting humanity’s well-being back at the center. It means being able to embrace an integral vision of ecology, which crosses the economic, social, environmental, cultural, and human dimensions.
The key ingredients for regeneration are diversity and inclusion, and at this moment in time more than ever I hope they will light the way to help us build a better future for all.
The Future Food Institute is an international ecosystem that believes climate change is at the end of your fork. By harnessing the power of its global ecosystem of partners, innovators, researchers, educators, and entrepreneurs, FFI aims to sustainably improve life on Earth through transformation of global food systems.
Through an integral ecological regeneration approach, FF trains the next generation of changemakers, empowers communities, and engages government and industry in actionable innovation, catalyzing progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Learn more at www.futurefoodinsitute.org, join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube. Or attend a program through the FutureFood.Academy!
