Jeanette spoke at a panel titled ‘Measuring Progress on Adaptation and Mitigation of Women in Agriculture: What does it take?’ at the Food and Agriculture Pavillion during COP27 on Monday, November 11th, from 11:30 AM-12:30 PM. The session was co-hosted by CGIAR, FAO and The Rockefeller Foundation. For the full program of events visit https://cop27foodpavilion.cgiar.org.
Jeannette highlighted the potential for women to “become extremely important actors in food security, natural resource management, and agriculture adaptation and mitigation.” However, the issue persists in the lack of funding and recognition for women in the global agriculture system persists. WOCAN presents a transformational solution to replicate the success of the carbon market approaches and create a revenue stream for the women’s organizations and groups part of WOCAN’s vast global network. Gurung then highlights the metrics developed to progress women’s empowerment based on a 2015 meeting with a women’s group based in Kenya. This group identified six domains–time, health, food insecurity, income and assets, knowledge and education, and leadership. WOCAN adopted these six domains in their mixed qualitative and quantitative methodology to measure each of these six domains in the W+ standard. After outlining the WOCAN infrastructure, the moderator asked Jeannette to respond with two words on what’s needed to improve the understanding of agricultural and food policies. Jeannette answered, “Women’s perspectives on what’s needed.” Ultimately, the overall discussion of the session teases out the gendered vulnerabilities across the globe, specifically Subsaharan Africa and South Asia, to the climate crisis impact on the food supply chain. The panelists all advocated the urgency for women to be involved in the food adaptation framework because when women are particularly engaged and lead as voices of agency, studies have demonstrated areas of immense progress in food access.