4 March 2013: At an Interactive Dialogue with the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva, Switzerland, on 4 March 2013, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, presented a report on women’s rights and the right to food, and called for greater consideration of gender issues by the UN food agencies.

The report (A/HRC/22/50), dated 24 December 2012, examines the obstacles facing women in access to employment, social protection and productive resource for food production, as well as processing and value chain development. It underscores that discrimination against women is pervasive across all spheres of life, and the need to address root causes of discrimination. At the dialogue, De Schutter called for the post-2015 agenda to include a strong accountability mechanism, and argued for the central role of the right to food in the post-2015 discussions.

In the report, De Schutter describes three pathways impacting the right to food, related to: maternal and child under-nutrition; weak bargaining position of women; and discrimination against women as food producers. He notes that extension services often do not reach women, inheritance of land discriminates against women in many countries, women face discrimination as waged workers, they have less access to credit, and research and development activities often do not take into account the constraints faced by women.

To address these barriers, De Schutter advocates for improving girls’ access to education and investing in social programmes that challenge existing gender roles. He suggests that states invest in activities that relieve women from the burden of household chores, that recognize the need to accommodate women’s time constraints, that mainstream concern for gender in laws, policies and programmes, and that adopt multisector, long-term strategies that move toward full equity for women. [Press Release from UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food] [Publication: Women’s Rights and the Right to Food] [Publication: Executive Summary: Gender and the right to food] [Press Release from UN Human Rights Council]