Food Access: Closing the Gender Gap

Women around the world experience higher rates of hunger and food insecurity than men. The food insecurity gender gap is highest in Latin America and the Caribbean among all regions. Ongoing conflict, changing weather patterns, and the pandemic have worsened women’s relative lack of access to food. IAF grantees have responded with innovative programs to bolster food security, especially for women, in areas ranging from sustainable agriculture to enterprise development. Even when they go unrecognized, women have always been integral forces in community-led development. These women best understand their own challenges, meaning they are also the best suited to address them. 

Raising Incomes As Well As Vegetables and Livestock in Peru

In the rural Indigenous community of Callatiac, Cusco, Peru, women experience a low standard of living due to environmental challenges, food insecurity, and barriers to civic participation. Though women play a crucial role in upholding the subsistence agriculture economy of Callatiac, their priorities for their community and land were rarely taken into consideration by the governing community association.

IAF grantee Cáritas Arquidiocesana del Cusco (Cáritas Cusco), part of the IAF’s Women INvesting in Growth and Security (WINGS) portfolio, is building avenues for women to reach social and economic equality through a local food security initiative that directly increases women’s sale and production of vegetables and animals. Not only does this feed more members of the community, but it generates more income for women and their families to thrive. The group organized the construction of new fruit and vegetable nurseries and donated guinea pigs to community members to diversify their food sources. The original recipients of guinea pigs were 70% women, who more than doubled their incomes on average as compared to when they started the project in 2017. With healthier families and higher incomes, women were encouraged to continue raising guinea pigs because it proved to be an investment in food, health, and education.

Supporting Women’s Small Businesses in Haiti

In Haiti, chronic food insecurity has been caused by recurring natural disasters, a broken agricultural system, and a lack of government funds or local investment. Rural districts often experience all of these factors at once, including Mahotière, where grantee Union des Paysans Tèt Kole de Mahotière (UPTKMA) is based. UPTKMA, another WINGS initiative grantee, works to increase food security and local incomes by helping local families manage their finances, raise livestock, and grow organic gardens. Like Cáritas Cusco, UPTKMA promotes women’s social and economic inclusion. More than half of UPTKMA’s members are women, and more than half of the organization’s resources have been directed towards women.

To combat food insecurity in Haiti, UPTKMA has helped groups of women do everything from establishing gardens and seed storage programs to processing agricultural produce into jams, cassava, and peanut butter. Additionally, UPTKMA is unique in that it bolsters food security by helping members manage their finances. 

First, leaders train group delegates in savings and loan association management, income-generating activity, and basic accounting. Then, UPTKMA leaders give funds to individual solidarity groups, which are smaller groups that encourage participation, to distribute loans among their own members. Most of the recipients of these loans are women, and they use their funds to support their businesses selling fruits, vegetables, and even non-agricultural goods. Not only do these businesses provide more food for community members, but they generate more income for the women and families who sell them, allowing these women to buy more food for their own families.

Promoting Unity through Food Security in Colombia 

Corporación Grupo Semillas (Semillas) is an organization that builds peace and security in Indigenous and farming communities of Southern Tolima, Colombia. Semillas aims to lift the region out of struggle following the Colombian armed conflict. Specifically, the organization is dedicated to improving land management processes and achieving food security in Tolima, but goes further by emphasizing women’s inclusion and generational change.

A deep commitment to women’s empowerment is reflected in each layer of Semillas. In its general assembly, made of professionals from scientists to anthropologists, more than 60% of associates are women. Almost all of Semillas’ 15 partner organizations have a majority of women participants. In fact, three of the 15 groups working with Semillas deal entirely with women’s empowerment and rights as they relate to agriculture and food security. 

• Mesa de Mujeres del Sur del Tolima unites women from different rural and Indigenous groups in southern Tolima to create common strategies for women’s rights. 
• Manos de Mujer is an organization of Indigenous women that advances food security by protecting seeds, maintaining ancestral knowledge, and planting home gardens in the dry forest of Tolima. 
• Asociación para el Futuro con Manos de Mujer defends women’s rights while improving food security and water management. 

To Semillas, a lasting peace in Colombia cannot exist without women’s inclusion and food security.

Women’s Empowerment is a Continued Effort

IAF grantees Cáritas Cusco, UPTKMA, and Semillas demonstrate that there’s not only one right way to engage women in community-led development. Although they have different strategies, from providing livestock to financial training, these grassroots organizations have secured more food for their communities by including the women who understand the issue most. With success so far, and knowing that women’s empowerment is crucial to continued development, these grantees are expanding their work for the future.