Title
Factors relating to food security/insecurity
Author(s)
Frances Henry; Eduardo Bianchi; Fiorella Bianchi; Monica Moraes R.; Zulema Lehm A.; Susana Raffalli; Maria Tapia
Published
2017
Abstract
This chapter is based upon the premise that the global conditions of food security and especially food insecurity cannot be understood without reference to the important role of gender in society. Food security, a “condition in which all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” is one of the most important social conditions in the modern world affecting millions of people. The problems associated with food security and insecurity have been examined and studied at some length especially in the development literature. Women are intimately connected to the growth, preparation, manufacture and dissemination of food beginning within the family. Women also play a major role in agricultural and other food producing and it is now recognized that the inclusion of the role of gender is critical to the understanding of how strategies need to be developed for producing and distributing enough food to maintain the world's population. It is therefore essential to examine the role of gender in food production but the term itself is fairly recent in the social science literature and it can therefore be somewhat confusing. We begin this chapter therefore with an overview of its meaning and the various uses to which it has been put. We then provide a case study of a Bolivian Indigenous community that highlights the importance of women in decision-making followed by a case study of the contemporary crisis in food management due to political changes in contemporary Venezuela. The concluding section of the chapter highlights the important but adverse relationship between gender inequality and food insecurity.
Full Citation
Henry, F., E. Bianchi, F. Bianchi, M. Moraes R., Z. Lehm A., S. Raffalli, and M. Tapia (2017). Factors relating to gender and food security/insecurity. In Challenges and Opportunities for Food and Nutrition Security in the Americas: The View of the Academies of Sciences, 110-119. InterAmerican Network of Academies of Sciences (IANAS) and Inter Academy Partnership (IAP).

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