Our OpEd in Aljazeera linked here about how food disruptions from the pandemic and war show the need for strong local supply chains. Yet the US and others won’t learn.
Globalised food systems are making hunger worse
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Category Archives: Reflections
Podcast Episode on Rethinking International Agricultural Development
Here I speak with Alex Park – Journalist and Researcher for the Global Get Down podcast on existing international agricultural development models and trends and what the implications of this mean for smallholders and our food systems.
Since the 2008 global food crisis, African governments, with the help of foreign donors, have financed the agriculture sector. Initially, this was a programme centred on the efforts of smallholder farmers as they recognized that these farmers were pivotal to the economy. However, these programmes failed to bring much progress because their models have failed to assist smallholders, ultimately forcing them to leave their farmlands and causing mass displacement. As a result, this so-called “Green Revolution” has brought more harm than good.
Thanks to Joao and Thalin for the interesting conversation.
Here is a link to the podcast click here or find it on the Spotify app and follow the Global Get Down Podcast link here.
Justice for the Batwa People
As many of you may not know, I sit on the Board of Advisors for a small but fierce NGO called Initiative for Equality whose work I believe in because it is actually community-driven, diverse, inclusive and focused on bringing justice to the most marginalized.
One of their main focus areas has been in defence of the Batwa people – an indigenous group located in the Congo Basin region of Central Africa who are facing genocidal attacks and atrocities.
While I do not know anything about this topic, I know that this group is discriminated against for many reasons. One is because they are pygmies, and have been in Central Africa for at least 88,000 years.
This means that they are among the longest-surviving human cultures on earth, having developed sustainable ways of living that didn’t destroy one another through inequality and conflict, and didn’t destroy nature.
For tens of thousands of years they survived, developing their nature-based economy and culture, and protecting the forests of the Congo Basin with all of its diverse plant and animal life. But over the past 100 years – the space of just one lifetime – the Batwa people are being destroyed so that others can take their lands, forests, wildlife and minerals.
They could teach us how to survive; how to coexist peacefully with one another and with nature. We should be learning from them, not destroying them.
Who is taking their lands and life?
* Neighboring agricultural tribes are desperate for land as their corrupt governments keep the agricultural population in poverty by supporting corporate land grabs, cash crops and mining operations.
* Corrupt ruling elites cut lucrative deals to extract timber, wildlife and especially minerals from the Batwa’s traditional lands, enriching themselves and hiding the money in offshore accounts. This has been extensively covered by one of the famous journalistic collaborations based on leaked data, called “Congo Holdup”.
* International companies and their governments enable this corruption by continuing to do dirty but profitable business deals in this region in order to get minerals and “carbon offsets” – justifying it as necessary to address climate change and build a “green economy”.
* Violent conflict is rampant in the forests of the eastern Congo as armed militias, often supported by foreign governments, fight over control of the minerals for international export.
* Huge conservation corporations like WWF and WCS, along with their donors and collaborating governments, expel the Batwa from their lands under the guise of “preserving biodiversity” – despite the fact that the Batwa were vastly better at conserving the forests and biodiversity for countless millennia. Now wealthy Westerners engage in tourism and trophy hunting, and mineral deposits are illegally exploited in the so-called Protected Areas, while the Batwa are killed for returning to their traditional lands.
Thus this vicious cycle of local corruption and violent conflict, incentivized by the profits that flow from international business interests, is destroying one of the longest-surviving human cultures on earth, along with the second largest rainforest in the world after the Amazon.
By destroying the Batwa, we are destroying our own humanity.
Why does IfE – a global network of organizations dedicated to overcoming inequalities around the world – devote so much time and energy to this one particular situation?
* Because this is our largest, most active regional network, and IfE makes its decisions through its partners on the ground.
* Because the situation of the Batwa is a microcosm of everything that is wrong in the world: from the exploitation by corrupt governments, wealthy elites and international corporations to the destruction of nature, sustainable ways of life and peaceful human societies. If we can help the Batwa people change their situation, we can apply those learnings and tactics to help change other situations around the globe, too.
* Because the level of violence the Batwa are up against is so bad that they cannot defend themselves without help. Their need for global solidarity is urgent, and that’s what IfE does best.
* Because most international NGOs that have gotten involved have failed to improve the situation of the Batwa. But we still have a large, regional, multi-partner collaboration working directly with the Batwa on the ground, and we believe we can support the Batwa to achieve their goals. We won’t walk away.
In 2018, Gabriel1, a Batwa rights activist, was kidnapped into an unmarked government vehicle as he walked down a city street. He was thrown in prison without charges, to be tortured off and on for 4 years. When we finally succeeded in making enough noise to obtain his release, we were overjoyed – until we learned that a death squad working with a political party planned to kill him. We moved heaven and earth to help him to relocate and apply for asylum elsewhere. He lives in poverty now, but at least he is alive – for the moment.
1 name changed to protect his identity
What does IfE intend to do about the destruction of the Batwa and their lands?
This multidimensional problem needs to be addressed from many directions. We are looking for a way to record the voices of Batwa elders talking about their history and traditional culture, before they leave us. We are holding discussions with Batwa community members to help them to think through how to reverse the cultural breakdown. We are experimenting with conflict resolution mechanisms that could help resolve inter-ethnic and inter-community disputes. We are advocating for new approaches to conservation that work with the indigenous people instead of expelling them from their lands. And we are intervening however possible to stop the arbitrary arrests, torture and killings that are happening to Batwa people across the Congo Basin and African Great Lakes region.
But we are not only fighting for the Batwa: by preventing this amazingly sucessful human culture from being destroyed, we are also fighting for our own survival – trying to retain some of the key indigenous knowledge, wisdom and life ways that could help all of us survive the existential threats we face today.
We urgently need your help and support! Join with us to stop the killings, reverse the land grabs, elevate the Batwa’s human and indigenous rights, and retain a model for human survival. Please support our work with the Batwa people by making a generous donation today or by sharing this post.
I am writing this today to raise awareness of these issues and of what can be done. You can help.
Donate here.
For more information:
https://www.dw.com/en/congo-deadly-violence-in-a-national-park/a-61368064
Considering gender differences in measuring household food security
Our latest study compares men’s and women’s reporting of household food insecurity in northern Ghana, where we find differences even among husbands and wives living within the same household.
Household food insecurity estimates were lower on average for men than women’s estimates.
There is also a statistically significant decrease in men’s estimates when compared to women’s.
Men’s and women’s estimates within the same household varied widely for both the scale and prevalence of household food insecurity.
This study shows that husband’s and wives’ perspectives differed greatly, which raises important questions about the reliability of household food insecurity measures.
It also raises the need for further questioning of the reliability of household-level measures on poverty, well-being, and other phenomena more generally.
This study points to the need to consider gendered experiences and knowledge of food insecurity.
See the study here.
The new US nutrition aid strategy undermines Africa’s hungriest
Check out our latest OpEd in Aljazeera published here.
The new US foreign assistance strategy for nutrition makes little room for vulnerable smallholder farmers who have been the foundation of Africa’s food systems to date.
Instead of focusing “on households” by helping smallholders grow nutritious food, more resources will go to “large-scale fortification”- a technical term for the funneling of low-nutrition crops to factories that can blend them with vitamins and minerals.
US’s new nutrition plan continues the Green Revolution in Africa. While they announce their intent to help the most vulnerable like smallholder farmers, they build a highly mechanised, capital-intensive, agro-industrial economy, leaving little room for smallholders who are also the main providers of nutritious and diverse foods on the continent.
In the way the US’s agriculture plans have encouraged farmers to rely on factory-synthesized chemicals to add nutrients to African land, its new nutrition plan promotes a reliance on factory-synthesized vitamins to add nutrients to African food.
Activists and scholars need to continue to hold USAID and others accountable for their promises to support smallholder farmers, who should be at the centre of efforts to end malnutrition.
Smallholders are already well suited to produce the most biologically and environmentally diverse and culturally appropriate food, not processors looking to profit from manufacturing nutrition on their behalf.
Gender-climate change nexus in Africa – Systematic review of scholarship
Excited to share our latest publication in Ambio on gender-climate change nexus. Are critical gender analyses intersecting with climate change research in Africa? Despite the calls for it. Not really. A systematic review of 260 articles
This systematic search and review analyzes all 260 studies published in the Web of Science on gender and climate change in Africa.
While there is no strong methodological bias overall in this literature, comparative case studies and sex disaggregated analyses at individual and household levels predominate, mainly from Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa.
A high number of articles covered the agrarian sector by comparing women’s and men’s on-farm vulnerability to a changing climate based on their perceptions, assets and adaptation behaviours.
Though this literature recognizes women’s important conservation, farming, and food responsibilities, it oftentimes generalized these contributions without evidence.
A number of themes covered were surprisingly minimal given their focus in wider literature, including studies of coastal areas, conflict, education, energy, migration, urban areas, and water.
Overall, more justice-oriented research is needed into the power relations and socioeconomic structures that intersect with other social categories to make certain people, places, and institutions more vulnerable to climate change.
Investigations into the power dynamics between (social) scientists and African institutions and communities are also needed as 80 percent of the articles reviewed stem from North America and Europe, and 59 percent are locked beyond paywalls.
Intensifying Work Burdens for Women Under COVID-19 and the Need for a Universal Care System
According to the International Labour Organization (2018, xxix; hereafter ILO), women perform three-quarters of unpaid care work globally. Women who work in full time paid employment still do considerably more unpaid care work than men who work in full time paid employment. This disparity translates to a long-established double work burden for women, which includes the unpaid care work of reproduction, such as the caring for children, elderly, sick, and the severely disabled, cooking, cleaning, and other household tasks, alongside the work of production or for pay (Elson 2000). While there has been an increase in women’s participation in the labour market and men’s contributions to unpaid care work globally, the gender gap in unpaid care only declined by seven minutes across 23 countries between 1997 and 2012 (ILO 2018, xxx). The little progress in reducing the gender divide in unpaid care responsibilities calls into question the effectiveness of existing policy and services to address these disparities. There are obvious moral imperatives for policymakers to reduce this gender gap, but there are also economic incentives and potential tax contributions.
If women’s unpaid care work were translated to an hourly minimum wage, it would amount to 9% of global Gross Domestic Product or US$11 trillion (ILO 2018, xxix).
Through the feminist theoretical framing of a public ethics of care, this post briefly points to the ways that different types of care work largely performed by women is being grossly impacted by the pandemic. A summary of evidence from the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK) and Canada is provided because of the availability of new data. This post proposes a universal care system to respond to the global pandemic, reduce women’s care work burdens and promote gender justice in the longer term.
Public ethics of care
The term ‘unpaid care work’ is often used synonymously with ‘social reproduction’ or ‘non-market work’ (Folbre 2006). Unpaid care work includes a highly varied set of activities. Some literature defines care work based on activities that involve personal interactions. Others define unpaid care work based on the site of reproduction within the home (Folbre 2006). Yet, care work also exists within the paid economy, particularly employment that involves care provided within other people’s homes.
The feminist framings of care work come into conflict with liberal ideas underlying policy that are premised on individual rights and autonomous choices. Historically, mainstream political theory cast care work as the responsibility of individual women and not the public because of stereotypes that define women as ‘naturally caring’ (Leavy 2005). While there is no universal standard of care, there is the underlying understanding that individuals do not make autonomous choices but live in a web of interdependent relations that require care (Greenswag 2019).
A public ethics of care framing helps to centre care work in policy by disrupting the commonly held divides between public and private roles and by pointing to our interdependencies. This framing is overtly political, requiring that we advocate for changes by demonstrating the underlying structures that contribute to intersectional inequality, exploitation and injustice to promote non-exploitative care relations (Greenswag 2019). This political commitment requires context specific-responses and flexible, open ended policies. Sometimes responses require eliminating social differences so that individuals can equally make free choices. Other times responses require respecting and responding to these differences (Greenswag 2019; Leavy 2005). Overall, policy needs to enable good forms of diverse, care relations and remove the structures that lead to the perpetuation of harmful or exploitative ones (Greenswag 2019).
A need for a public ethics of care in policy is increasingly coming into focus under the global COVID-19 pandemic. With many people living at home under varying degrees of lockdown measures, this translates to less measurable paid work and economic activities. Yet, many of these activities, such as food preparation, childcare and education, among others are being transferred to the home, mainly to women for no compensation.
Care work under the global pandemic
With childcare facilities and schools closed, in addition to work from home orders to prevent the spread of COVID-19, many women have seen their double work burdens intensify. A recent study published by Adams-Prassl et al. (2020, 20) finds that during the pandemic from March to April 2020, women across the UK and US who were pursuing their paid employment from home, saw their care work increase, spending about one hour more on childcare and home schooling than men. Socially isolated single mothers who make up the majority of single parent families are likely in even more stressful situations because they are unable to access their community support.
Alongside gender stereotypes, women are generally taking on more childcare and homeschooling responsibilities than men in the pandemic because women are more likely to give up their paid work to fulfill unpaid care needs (Bertrand, Kamenica and Pan 2015). More women than men have also lost their paid work in the pandemic because of the precariousness of their employment. This career break phenomenon for women is a major underlying cause of the gender wage gap (Pelletier and Patterson 2019). With increasing demands on time due to childcare and homeschooling needs in a lockdown, men’s more secure and better compensated paid labour is often prioritized within heterosexual couples (Bertrand, Kamenica and Pan 2015). Leaving women to handle the reproductive tasks, which exacerbates the gender wage gap and unpaid labour burdens for women further. Care labour requires high amounts of time and mental energy, which are taxing for women and a frequent source of conflict amongst heterosexual couples (Daminger 2019). This conflict can translate to violence against women, which has also increased in the global pandemic.
While the gender divide in reproductive labour is highest in high-income earning households (Adams-Prassl et al. 2020), women who work in lower paying jobs, particularly women of colour and migrants, also face unique care work burdens and threats in the pandemic. COVID-19 has disrupted the perceived divide between paid and unpaid care work. Many of the economic activities performed disproportionally by migrants have been lost in the pandemic, such as in domestic care, accommodation and food retail sectors. For example, in Canada, employment for recent immigrants fell much more sharply from February to April 2020 (23.2%), than those who were born in Canada (14%). This employment loss is largely being transferred mainly to women in the home for no compensation.
Paid care work is performed largely by women and people of colour who are operating on the front lines of the pandemic, putting them at greatest risk of contracting the virus. Boniol et al. (2019) shows that women make up 67% of the health care workforce across 104 countries. One third of deaths related to COVID-19 in the US and 81% in Canada have been those in nursing or long-term care home residents and workers (Yourish et al. 2020). Workers in Canadian long-term care homes are predominantly women and and those who speak English as a second language (Song et al. 2020). In the UK, 61% of the total deaths due to COVID-19 are those from black and Asian backgrounds who work in long term and health care sectors (Marsh and McIntyre 2020; Williamson 2020) and at least half were not born in the UK (Cook, Kursumovic, and Lennane 2020; Rimmer 2020).
It is also worth noting that the LGBTQI community face unique care circumstances that have not been captured in current COVID-19 reporting. This community tends to rely more on their friendships and wider networks for care and support because of their experiences of discrimination and harassment by care service providers (Shiu, Muraco, and Fredriksen-Goldsen 2015; Willis, Ward, and Fish 2011). These interdependent relationships of care are also likely being disrupted due to lockdown measures. Yet, there is no reporting of these figures, so it is impossible to tell how and to what extent their care is compromised.
We need an inclusive universal care system
Since the COVID-19 pandemic has publicly revealed the essential but poorly protected and compensated care work largely carried out by women and minorities, this is a unique moment to advocate for a public ethics of care in policy. A care system should be universal and treated as a public good because there is a collective social responsibility to keep all people healthy, safe and cared for during vulnerable times in their lives, which everyone experiences to varying degrees. A universal care system could include health, child, elder and wider family care, including care for those with severe illnesses and disabilities. Care systems could also include social work, counselling and psychological services among others. As we see in public health, long term and daycare systems in Canada, greater government involvement in care service funding, provisioning and monitoring would provide better quality and more cost-efficient care to a greater number of people than private or mixed public-private systems (Baker, Gruber and Millian 2019; Kane and Kane 1985). Universal care also leads to more women earning income, which has obvious benefits for families, as well as the economy and tax contributions that would pay for a large proportion of care costs in the long run (Scarborough et al. 2020; Yates 2009).
Canada has had an expanded universal health care system that includes long term care for decades. Long term care is offered regardless of a person’s income in residential, nursing and community settings through mainly for-profit systems that are publicly subsidized. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a catastrophe in Canada’s long-term care homes where there have been the highest numbers of deaths, particularly of women (Yourish et al. 2020). This catastrophe is due to weak enforcement of service standards associated with a largely for-profit system. Low wages, precarious employment and high levels of workplace violence, injury, poor sanitation and protection have made the Canadian long-term care system at greater risk of the pandemic (Mialkowski 2020). Instilling a fully public, decentralized system would be more efficient in maintaining higher quality care for long term needs and likely not lead to such catastrophic outcomes in a pandemic.
In the 1990s, the province of Quebec in Canada also established a universal $5 a day (now $7.30) child-care program (ages zero to four), which has led to a more widely accessible and better-quality child care service. The government of Quebec provides services regardless of a family’s income levels, including within mainly non-profit centres (for older children), as well as home-based care staffed by regulated providers (for younger children) (Brennan and Mahon 2011). This program led to a rise in the number of childcare centres, stricter requirements of formal qualifications for all caregivers and higher wage policies. The program also led to a very large increase in the use of these services, which reflects the reduced reliance on extended family and community networks (Baker, Gruber, and Milligan 2008) that tends to predominantly involve women carers for little compensation. It is also found that the care provided in this program is better than the quality of care in for-profit or unregulated care facilities in Quebec (Baker, Gruber, and Milligan 2019). The greatest benefits of the program over the long term, have been for children in low income and single parent families, as well as those in the bottom quintiles of test score distribution (Baker, Gruber, and Milligan 2019). Yet, there have also been some negative behavioural outcomes for children, as well as stress for families. Studies conclude that if this program could improve some of these negative impacts, it could lead to long term progressive outcomes for families and children. For example, Glass, Simon, and Anderson (2016) finds that across 22 OECD countries, paid time off and childcare subsidies are associated with fewer disparities in levels of happiness between parents with children and non-parents.
Even the most progressive policies and universal care systems available, however, have not necessarily led to equitable divisions of care work between women and men. There needs to be a greater incentive for men to take up care responsibilities, such as through the hiring of male employees in some of these care facilities.
A universal care system should also be more accommodating to a wider network of care relationships beyond the nuclear family that tends to predominate, which would be more inclusive of those in LGBTQI and immigrant communities (Shiu, Muraco, and Fredriksen-Goldsen 2015; Willis, Ward, and Fish 2011).
COVID-19 has brought to the front and centre women and minorities’ poorly compensated and protected contributions to essential paid and unpaid care work that is making them disproportionally vulnerable in the pandemic. Adhering to a feminist conceptualization of an ethics of care, there is a collective responsibility to ensure that everyone has access to safe, secure and adequate care at different stages of their lives that do not depend on exploiting women and minorities’ labour. A universal care system is one critical step towards realizing these goals both to cope with a pandemic, as well as in the longer term for transformative justice.
References
Adams-Prassl, Abi Adams, Teodora Boneva, Marta Golin, and Christopher Rauh. 2020. “Inequality in the Impact of the Coronavirus Shock: Evidence from Real Time Surveys.” Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3594297.
Baker, Michael, Jonathan Gruber, and Kevin Milligan. 2019. “The long-run impacts of a universal child care program.” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 11(3): 1-26.
Baker, Michael, Jonathan Gruber, and Kevin Milligan. 2008. “Universal child care, maternal labor supply, and family well-being.” Journal of Political Economy 116(4): 709-745.
Bertrand, Marianne, Emir Kamenica, and Jessica Pan. 2015. “Gender identity and relative income within households.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 130(2): 571-614.
Boniol, Mathieu, Michelle McIsaac, Lihui Xu, Tana Wuliji, Khassoum Diallo, and Jim Campbell. 2019. “Gender equity in the health workforce: Analysis of 104 countries.” World Health Organization. Retrieved from https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/311314/WHO-HIS-HWF-Gender-WP1-2019.1-eng.pdf.
Brennan, Deborah, and Rianne Mahon. 2011. “State structures and the politics of chil care.” Politics & Gender 7(2): 286-293.
Cook, Tim, Emira Kursumovic, and Simon Lennane. 2020. “Exclusive: deaths of NHS staff from COVID-19 analysed”. Health Service Journal 22.
Daminger, Allison. 2019. “The cognitive dimension of household labour.” American Sociological Review 84(4): 609-633.
Elson, Diane. 2000. Progress of the world’s women. UNIFEM Biennial Report, United Nations Development Fund for Women: New York.
Folbre, Nancy. 2006. “Measuring care: Gender, empowerment, and the care economy.” Journal of Human Development 7(2): 183-199.
Glass, Jennifer, Robin W. Simon, and Matthew A. Andersson. 2016. “Parenthood and happiness: Effects of work-family reconciliation policies in 22 OECD countries.” American Journal of Sociology 122(3): 886-929.
Greenswag, Kari. 2019. “Care Ethics and Public Policy: A Holistic, Transformative Approach.” Politics & Gender 15(4): 912-940.
International Labour Organization. 2018. “Care work and care jobs for the future of decent work.” Retrieved from https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—dgreports/—dcomm/—publ/documents/publication/wcms_633135.pdf.
Kane, Rosalie A, and Robert L Kane. 1985. “The Feasibility of Universal Long-Term–Care Benefits: Ideas from Canada.” New England Journal of Medicine 312(21): 1357-1364.
Leavy, Traci M. 2005. “At the Intersection of Intimacy and Care: Redefining “Family” through the Lens of a Public Ethic of Care.” Politics & Gender 1(1): 65-95.
Marsh, Sarah, and Niamh McIntyre. 2020. “Six in 10 UK health workers killed by COVID-19 are BAME.” The Guardian, May 25, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/25/six-in-10-uk-health-workers-killed-by-covid-19-are-bame.
Mialkowski, C. J. J. 2020. “Long term care facilities in Ontario. 4th Canadian Joint Task Force.” Retrieved from https://www.macleans.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/JTFC-Observations-in-LTCF-in-ON.pdf.
Pelletier, Rachelle, and Martha Patterson. 2015. “The gender wage gap in Canada: 1998-2018. Labour Statistics: Research papers.” Statistics Canada. Retrieved from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-004-m/75-004-m2019004-eng.htm.
Rimmer, Abi. 2020. “Covid-19: Disproportionate impact on ethnic minority healthcare workers will be explored by government.” The British Medical Journal doi:10.1136/bmj.m1562 pmid:32303494
Scarborough, William, Caitlyn Collins, Leah Ruppanner, and Liana Christin Landivar. 2020. “COVID-19 and the Care Crisis: An Evidence-Based Policy Recommendation for Supporting Families.” DOI:10.31235/osf.io/zgbkr.
Shiu, Chengshi, Anna Muraco, and Karen Fredriksen-Goldsen. 2016. “Invisible care: Friend and partner care among older lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) adults.” Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research 7(3): 527-546.
Song, Yuting, Matthias Hoben, Peter Norton, and Carole A. Estabrooks. 2020. “Association of work environment with missed and rushed care tasks among care aides in nursing homes.” JAMA Network Open 3(1): e1920092-e1920092.
Williamson, Elizabeth, Alex J. Walker, Krishnan J. Bhaskaran, Seb Bacon, Chris Bates, Caroline E. Morton, Helen J. Curtis. 2020. “OpenSAFELY: factors associated with COVID-19-related hospital death in the linked electronic health records of 17 million adult NHS patients”. medRxiv. Retrieved from https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.06.20092999v1.full
Willis, Paul, Nicki Ward, and Julie Fish. 2011. “Searching for LGBT carers: Mapping a research agenda in social work and social care.” British Journal of Social Work 41(7): 1304-1320.
Yates, Rob. 2009. “Universal health care and the removal of user fees.” The Lancet 373(9680): 2078-2081.
Yourish, Karen, K. K. Rebecca Lai, Danielle Ivory, and Mitch Smith. 2020. “One-third of all US coronavirus deaths are nursing home residents or workers.” The New York Times, May 11, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/09/us/coronavirus-cases-nursing-homes-us.html.
Blog post on Women & Food Waste @FoodWasteStudy
I just published a blog post here for the Food Waste Studies Group International on
Food Waste – What do Women Have to do With It?
Check it out and the group for an active discussion, resources and community on all things food waste.
Follow us on Twitter @FoodWasteStudies
Why we still need International Women’s Day
And my biggest pet peeves when discussing gender and women’s rights issues from this past year
Happy International Women’s Day! #IWD2016 It is my favourite day of the year because I have an excuse to discuss one of my favourite topics: gender justice and women’s rights. If you have me as a friend on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter, you know that I go out of my way to create spaces for dialogue and debate. I want to continue to embrace disagreement and conflict both because it is uncomfortable, and because it fosters that dialogue.
Every now and then I have a friend (typically a woman) send me a private message asking me about how I deal with the loud, brash, seemingly entitled people (mostly men) who enjoy filling my wall or feed with their opinions about women’s issues. I respond by assuring them that I am ok with these comments, that I see them as dialogue and as an opportunity to learn, to challenge, and to practice communicating complex ideas to people who think differently than I do. It can be annoying, and it often brings me stress and even sometimes keeps me up at night. But it is important to be uncomfortable, to challenge yourself and discuss issues (respectfully) with those who differ from you, otherwise I would be just preaching to the choir.
I would like to tell you about some of my biggest pet peeves that I have discovered in creating these spaces for dialogue, and in the process highlight my favourite posts online from this past year.
Here they are:
1. Why do we still need feminism? Isn’t it 2015? Aren’t you satisfied yet?
No. Here are 15 reasons posted here or another 100 reasons posted here of why I am not even close to being satisfied.
Because…
- Canada is falling behind on gender equality, we moved to 23rd in the UN’s world rankings
- Many places (like the USA) still do not have parental leave and Canada has been defunding it for more than 10 years
- Politicians still want to try and control women’s health care and their bodies
- Women make less money than men even with the same job and credentials – in Canada it is more than twice the global average. Even the winning women’s soccer team will get less money than the men’s team
- Twice as many men dominate fields of decision making in every career all over the world
- Implicit perceptions of women who take leadership positions as masculine AND that we expect twice as much from them as men
- Sexual assault and harassment is still widespread even in Canada
- Women’s products in stores cost more even when they are the exact same as men’s products
- Women have been erased from history – look at all of the cool women and their biographies we never heard about in our Grade 10 history class
- Or the books by women about our rights that we never read
But also because men are still discriminated against as care providers and kindergarten teachers, that they still also experience a lot of violence (mostly from other men and authority figures like the police); that men are committing suicide at alarming rates; men are losing the right to be fathers in court and feel isolation in fatherhood and pressure to keep working (instead of taking parental leave). The economic recession hits men hardest because of patriarchal ideas of who good men are and how they should be as providers and protectors.
That is why we still need feminism and International Women’s Day, because patriarchy hurts men and women.
2. Women do not have it that bad here – I mean, it is so much worse in other places
According to several UN experts who are from countries that we would label as ‘one of those other places’ are shocked by the level of discrimination against women in the USA. See here and here quoting them by saying, “While all women are the victims of countless missing rights, women who are poor, belong to Native American, Afro-American and Hispanic ethnic minorities, migrant women, LBTQ women, women with disabilities and older women are disparately vulnerable,” the experts stressed.
3. Men and women are naturally…
Naturally what? Naturally better toilet cleaners, cooks, diaper changers? Really? What is it about our brain and vagina that makes us better at these things? According to this study published at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that brains aren’t distinctly “male” or “female.” Scientists from Tel-Aviv University hypothesized that if the brain is truly gendered, MRI scans would reveal consistent structural differences between sexes. Instead, they discovered that brain features vary across a spectrum like a mosaic. The study concludes that brains are not classifiable as male or female, but instead vary by the features of each individual.
Also this interesting video dispels some myths on the nature v. nurture debate about how biology is somehow separate from society. The two actually shape each other and are interdependent. So, if you could prove that there are genetic differences between females and males and that this shapes women and men’s behavior, to suggest that it is deterministic makes little sense.
4. Why do we call it Feminism? We should call it Humanism
If we called it Humanism, then we are reinforcing a different (already established) theory that historically left out women and other minorities (such as men without property). We call the movement feminism because it is still important to acknowledge that equality and empowerment for women is as important as it is for men.
“The reason why it’s called feminism while advocating for gender equality is because females are the gender that are the underprivileged, underserved gender,” Shives says in his video response. “You attain gender equality by advocating for the rights of the underprivileged gender.”
—And also the fact that people will still listen to his video response more so because he is a man talking about feminism
Feminism emerged out of women’s rights movements. Thus it comes from a challenge to the inequality of women. Feminism today exists as an agglomeration of past and present efforts to address forms of inequality facing women. This post provides excellent answers to some more questions.
5. Female celebrities who say they are not a feminist
This song found here would be my response if I was musically or comically inclined.
“Just take a look at the checklist: You like voting? You like driving? You’re a feminist,” Goodman sings as images of women’s suffrage flash on the screen. The video, which includes a nod to Gloria Steinem and the work of second-wave American feminists who fought for reproductive rights. When you say these things you just prove how you probably shouldn’t quit your day job and tackle social issues. You might actually hurt social efforts and justice and do more harm than good. So use your power for good and just leave it to people who have given it a bit more thought, or maybe do some further reading.
6. Feminists believe women should have more rights than men
Yes, in fact we are angry cat ladies, who don’t shave and have horns.
This stereotype has been fabricated for decades, and negative stereotypes about feminists have actually been created, see here which explains a bit about this history of making you think these things that have little bearing in reality. They are based more on the fear of change than anything else.
7. Feminism does not include me
Feminism has been talking about intersectionality for more than 20 years, explained here. People of multiple minority groups face both distinct advantages and disadvantages. Biases based on gender and race do not always simply pile up to create double disadvantages, for instance. Although feminism at one point in time has ignored certain groups and rendered them invisible, feminism has also learned a lot from this. Those who continue to ignore intersectionality are not up to speed with their theory *tsk tsk*.
8. The gender wage gap exists because women do not want to work and take lesser paying jobs
Skeptics of the gender wage gap say it’s misleading to cite the statistic that women overall are paid 78 cents on the dollar compared to men. This does not account for women’s choices, whether it’s working fewer and more flexible hours, or in industries or college majors that happen to pay less. But advocates say this misses the point. It’s true that the 78 cents figure does not account for different industries and education levels. But controlling for those factors still doesn’t erase the gap—women are paid 7 percent less than men a year out of college even controlling for just about every possible difference other than gender.
The gender wage gap is not only bad in the STEM fields, but also in social sciences. This article talks about how bad the problem of sexism is in the social sciences, such as economics.
9. Policing women’s bodies? Don’t be so dramatic!
Here is a list of items of clothing women have been told not to wear in 2015 – from a skirt that was too short, or too long (or skirts in general), from pants that were too tight and hair for being in braids, from flat shoes to high heels. The list goes on and on. Remember all of those times you or your daughter came home for disobeying the school dress code? Now do you believe me?
I always shock my friends and colleagues who live outside of Canada and the USA when I tell them that women cannot breast feed in public where I live. I mean they can, but there are always the dirty looks and side glances, and even sometimes that person who feels so entitled that they tell you it is gross. Women literally have to hide in toilets or cover their child with a blanket in order to breast feed. My friends do not understand because that is what women’s breasts are primarily for (they are not just play things), and also because nipples are so harmless (especially since we see men’s nipples all the time). We wonder why women get so lonely and suffer post-natal depression and make them feel even worse for being bad mothers for suffering depression. Perhaps it is because we cannot go anywhere because breast feeding is actually very demanding. Don’t believe me? Check out this video here.
Objectification of women’s bodies goes so far that even this study says that certain female students get higher grades because of their attractiveness. Wow.
10. We can empower her by…
You cannot empower someone. Empowerment only comes from within. This means that empowerment is by definition someone’s ability to imagine their world differently and be able to act upon it. You cannot just throw money at her and BOOM all of her problems are solved, she is empowered—doesn’t that sound like objectification? And I find it even more worrying when women’s empowerment is used to sell products that reinforce gender differences, and are ultimately disempowering. For example, this Dove commercial that continues to patronize and remind us that we need to think we are beautiful.
11. Feminism is Un-African
Some of the most popular current feminists are African, so really what are you talking about? Here is a list of 18 phenomenal African feminists: from Theo Sowa, Abena Busia, Osai Ojigho, Leymah Gbowee, and of course Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Liberate yourself from mental slavery, please.
12. Men’s Rights Movement (in North America)
This blog post exposes the terrifying types of men who are part of this movement. “No longer a fringe movement constricted to static ideology, MRAs have become a persistent, often violent force online, stooping to rape and death threats when defending their stance.” I recommend reading this post of an interview with one of the leaders and those attending an annual conference. This movement is an injustice to men’s issues and men everywhere. The issue of disproportionate suicide for men, experiences of violence (from other men) lack of access to formal health services, isolation in fatherhood are all symptoms of the same system that also hurts women – patriarchy. One of the most destructive forces in our social construction of masculinity is this notion of having to be the tough guy, the provider who does not feel emotion (until he explodes) or feels so much pressure resorting to violence (even to oneself). This same construction of masculinity is part of the reason that holds men back from accessing services, such as child care and health.
The men’s rights movement recognizes these issues, but places the blame not on social gendered norms, but on feminism. I know, I don’t really get it either. The worst part is when women’s issues come up and are raised, the conversation gets diverted (i.e. #notallmen) making issues to be again all about men. If I was a man, I would be more horrified with the level of misplaced anger that the men’s rights movement has – #notinmyname seems appropriate.
Please share the post, resources and leave comments debating these points. I know the resources are not gold standard or peer reviewed. I know the facts are communicated in definitive and simplistic ways – but this is my attempt at being clear, concise and interesting. I assume you will take issue with something – and I respect that. I look forward to what you have to say.
GMO food is ‘Generally Missing Observation’ & Why Smallholders in Africa are so Against Growing it
To all of the converted – to those who turn to the quick, technical solutions of GM food for saving the ongoing food crisis – there is something you should know.
We actually have enough food in the world to feed everyone (FAO, 2014).
Those who are often the hungriest tend to be farmers (Watts, 2013).
Despite all of the gains we have made in technical improvements (we are producing 17% more food per person than we did 30 years ago) close to a billion people are hungry and this number has not changed for decades. In some regions, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the situation is getting worse.
So if hunger and malnutrition still exists despite improved technology and food production to meet the growing population, than what is going on? Why are so many people still hungry?
Like any technology, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) do not exist in a vacuum. Whether they are successful in increasing food production by deterring pests and insects, or add nutritious elements to the crop itself, this is by no means something that farmers want to grow or consumers want to eat.
Worse still, there is actually very little research conducted about GMOs. The recent article we published here finds very little evidence pointing to the health, environment or political economic gains from biotechnology.
In this paper we ask important questions about equality issues: will an innovation cause unemployment or migration in rural communities? Will the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Have the negative impacts of an innovation been considered?
Uribe, Glover, and Schnurr’s (2014) contribution makes clear that contextual factors such as governance and policy frameworks, credit availability and seed markets, as well as local agro-ecological factors such as insect pests, shape food security outcomes of GMO technology.
So what is the actual evidence?
Evidence of positive gains from GMOs in Africa:
– In a most recent meta-analysis, Klümper and Qaim (2014) details that herbicide-tolerant crops have lower production costs although insect-resistant crops have higher seed prices.
– Production levels of GM crops for herbicide tolerance rose by 9 and 25% above that for insect resistance. For example, average yields for GM cotton in South Africa from 1998 and 2001 were 25% higher than for conventional cotton with average increased earnings of 77%. Additionally, in Burkina Faso Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton hectares increased by 126% in 2010 from the level in 2009. According to Clive (2013), biotech cotton in low- income countries increased the income of 16.5 million smallholder farmers in 2013, including success in India (Kathage & Qaim, 2012).
Despite the few positive studies, evidence of gains for most is quite mixed and uncertain. If one thing’s for certain, an overwhelming majority of farmers have collectively organized against GMOs across the continent of Africa. Particularly against the private-sector-led agriculture investment strategies for food security that pushes GMOs.
The evidence supporting farmers concerns in Africa are many:
– Cases exist where industrial agriculture pushed by large corporate investment and their respective technologies have contributed to a decline in community development and environmental conditions (Patel, Torres, & Rosset, 2005) because they have no mechanisms or incentives to ensure basic rights (Carney, 2012; Patel et al., 2005, p. 430; Shepherd, 2012; Yengoh & Armah, 2014)
– Related neoliberal economic models of deregulation policies to allow for technology have weakened government services that regulate markets, which push vulnerable smallholder farmers to give up farming and migrate (Kuuire, Mkandawire, Arku, & Luginaah, 2013).
– The focus on technical and short-term fixes by public–private partnerships shifts funding away from fundamental structural problems (DFID & Wiggins, 2004).
– Even the focus on incorporating the smallholder farmer into the value chain has been found to work for only the top 2–20% of small-scale producers, who are often only men (McKeon, 2014, p. 10) and typically excludes farmers themselves in the planning process.
-Generally, smallholder farmers are unable to afford traditional agriculture technologies and especially not the more costly new biotechnology (Patel et al., 2005).
– Due to the monopoly of power on biotechnology by certain major corporations, GM crops would result in the costs of inputs increasing and the diversity of seed choice declining (Shiva, Jafri, Emani, & Pande, 2000).
– Terminator technologies ensure that farmers must either purchase new seed for each season or buy chemical keys to activate bioengineers’ crop traits, which will also put certain farmers at a disadvantage.
– Engineered genetic constructs may contaminate other farms unintentionally (Bailey, Willoughby, & Grzywacz, 2014).
-Leakages of GM crops into the food and feed supply have been reported with Prodigene corn, Syngenta Bt10 corn, and Liberty Link rice pointing to larger implications if done in places with poor infrastructure regulation (Bagavathiannan et al., 2011).
In current political economic conditions, should we really be pushing this stuff?
So even though there is some positive evidence that points to increasing yields and lowering production costs for farmers in Africa, the political economy of production (cotton in South Africa for example) has resulted in inequitable profit-sharing, coerced eviction, and widespread indebtedness of farmers (Witt, Patel, & Scnurr, 2006). It is unclear in the range of studies accounted for in the meta-analysis (Klümper & Qaim, 2014) whether these factors are considered and how they relate to food security or nutrition.
“When are you people going to stop coming into our continent with your recipes for solving our problems rather than supporting our own solutions?” – USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah in Rome in May 2012 speaking to the National Alliance. (McKeon, 2014, p. 13)
Policymakers, planners, donors tend to blame farmers for being ignorant, backward, lazy and low to uptake the technology. The implication is that farmers do not know what is good for them. That they do not understand the vision for modernization and progress for the future of their agriculture systems and food security.
However, perhaps it is the farmers who know what is best for their own farms.
The bioethical concerns over GM crops and other biotechnology needs to be situated in the much wider related issues of poverty, inequality, and social justice that puts the smallholder farmer at the centre of analysis, which is why debates of biotechnology must be understood within the broader context of neoliberal agrarian policies.
My Development Diary 