Abstract
(Englisch)
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SWIFT’s overall objective is to foster transitions towards sustainable, balanced and inclusive development of rural areas in Europe byfavouring the deployment of women-led innovations (WLI) acting for change in agriculture, promoting gender equality in rural areas froman intersectional, feminist and human rights-based perspective. SWIFT pursues this by engaging in applied feminist innovation studiesresearch better reflecting feminist and human-rights based approaches. This will enable to facilitate a change of framing in agriculture toaddress the social realities that perpetuate inequalities. Women, in all of their diversity, play a central role in agriculture and food systems.Their knowledge, skills, labour and leadership, however, are frequently invisible and undervalued. At present, the European agriculturalsector is characterized by high levels of inequality. The multiple barriers to gender equality in European agriculture are socio-cultural,economic and political, and perpetuate women’s inequality within the mutually constituting ‘productive’ sphere of farming outputs andin the ‘reproductive’ sphere of unpaid and undervalued labour that occurs on the farm, in the family and community. Some examplesinclude i) unequal access to land and productive resources, that shape and limit women’s participation in agriculture, constructing genderroles and identities and resulting, among other things, in ii) women under-representation in agricultural organizations and holding veryfew decision-making positions; iii) current agricultural education and training that reinforce stereotypes about farming as a male activityand which do not encourage young women to pursue agricultural careers; iv) social closure, characterised by interactional dynamics ofdiscrimination, exclusion and/or harassment, that lead to women being discouraged from taking up tasks or acquiring relevant farmingskills. The structural gender inequalities in agriculture are acutely felt by social groups that experience multiple and intersecting formsof oppression, including migrant farmworkers and LGBTIQ+ farmers. These intersecting forms of discrimination have not yet beenextensively documented, however, they constitute significant barriers to transformative change in rural areas in Europe. One of the maindifficulties for gender mainstreaming in agricultural policies is the framing of food. The EU’s primary commitment to purely economicmeasures of viability of farming businesses reflects the idea of food as a commodity that does not include the forms of farming that tendto be led by women. The framing of food as a commodity also fails to capture the commitments that have been made to the realisationof the right to adequate food. SWIFT will contribute to gender mainstreaming in agricultural and food policies by providing theoreticaland practical tools (feminist farm viability indicators and Gender responsive budgeting in policies) to favor a change of framing inthose policies that will facilitate the development and implementation of alternative framings of food. Methodologically, SWIFT adoptsa feminist, human rights-based, participatory and inclusive research methodology that applies an intersectional perspective, therebyrendering visible diverse experiences of inequality and giving a voice to those who are most marginalised. SWIFT aims to reinforce andamplify innovations led by marginalised actors to confront unequal social, economic and political structures in European agricultural andfood systems. We defined WLI in agriculture as grassroots innovations built to challenge structural inequalities in agriculture in ruralareas. Many of the WLI that are the focus of SWIFT have emerged under the broad umbrella of alternative food networks and havedemands connected to the human right to adequate food. Through the analysis of WLI, SWIFT will study if and how agroecologicalapproaches to food systems can promote gender equality in rural areas and contribute to the implementation of the European pillar ofsocial rights and the European gender equality strategy. Through the creation and consolidation of networks, tools and awareness oninequalities in agriculture and food systems SWIFT also seeks to promote new voices and visions for a more sustainable and equitablefuture. Central to SWIFT are the 21 WLI in 12 countries distributed within the main European biogeographical and social and politicalareas, but also outside Europe (Brazil, USA). WLIs are organized into eight clusters: i) social security schemes; ii) participation inagricultural organizations; iii) access to means of production; iv) access to training, v) mutual support; vi) migrant women farmworkersvii) LTBQ+ farmers and viii) Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The project relies on a multi-actor community of farmers, CSO, NGOand researchers. It comprises six work packages (WPs), closely interlinked and designed to facilitate action-research. WP2 and WP3 aremainly focused on deploying WLI while WP4 and WP5 are developing and testing practical tools to introduce alternative framings of foodin agricultural and rural policies which are compatible with gender equality and promote change. In WP2 conceptual and methodologicaltools will be co-designed to analyse WLI throughout SWIFT activities. WP3 will focus on amplifying innovations through exchangesat local, national and EU level and development of capability guides. WP4 will provide feminist viability indicators and WP5 focuseson identifying, analysing and enhancing the gender-responsive nature of EU policy and legal frameworks, notably the CAP. WP6 willenhance impact through a strategy for communication, dissemination and exploitation.
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