ABSTRACT
Why, when so many call for the inclusion of women and a gender perspective in food and nutrition security, is the food and nutrition security status of women and girls still not improving? The thesis of this volume is grounded upon the combined authors’ broad discussion and practical actions that addressed women’s continued exclusion from food and nutrition equity. This experience isolated two structural “disconnects” that frustrate advocacy for, as well as theoretical explanation of, the development of necessary policy and analysis to improve gender-based inequalities in achieving the human right to adequate food and nutrition. Chapter 2 of this volume introduces these two disconnects that, we argue, frustrate the potential of positive change in women’s access to the right to adequate food and nutrition. The disconnects are foundational to the analyses developed in depth in chapter 3 “Violence and Women’s Participation in the Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition,” chapter 4 “Maternal, Infant, and Young Child Feeding: Intertwined Subjectivities and Corporate Accountability,” and chapter 5 “Sustainable Food Systems, Gender, and Participation: Foregrounding Women in the Context of the Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition” of this volume. Chapter 6, “Closing Protection Gaps through a More Comprehensive Conceptual Framework for the Human Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition,” returns to the disconnects, providing a vision for progressive action and research moving forward.
