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Title | Date added | Template | Body | Legal status | Document type | Year | Document code | Original document | Paragraph text | Thematics | Topic(s) | Person(s) affected | Year |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 50 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | States' obligation to remove all discriminatory provisions in the law, and to combat discrimination that has its source in social and cultural norms, is an immediate obligation that must be complied with without delay. This should be combined with the use of temporary special measures to accelerate the achievement of gender equality, and with effective remedies for women who are victims of discrimination. In addition, as detailed in chapter V of this report, States should (a) make the investments required to relieve women of the burden of the household chores they currently shoulder; (b) recognize the need to accommodate the specific time and mobility constraints on women as a result of their role in the "care" economy, while at the same time redistributing the gender roles by a transformative approach to employment and social protection; (c) mainstream concern for gender in all laws, policies and programmes, where appropriate, by developing incentives that reward public administrations which make progress in setting and reaching targets in this regard; (d) adopt multisector and multi-year strategies that move towards full equality for women, under the supervision of an independent body to monitor progress, relying on gender-disaggregated data in all areas relating to the achievement of food security. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 49 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | International human rights law requires States to guarantee gender equality and the empowerment of women. While essential to the women's right to food, this would also contribute to the realization of the right to food for other members of society. The advancement of women's rights translates into improved physical and mental development of children, whose ability to learn and to lead healthy and productive lives will gain; it translates into better health and nutritional outcomes for the household, as the decision-making power within the family is rebalanced in favour of women; and it results in higher productivity for women as small-scale food producers. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 48 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | A successful strategy for strengthening the rights of women in support of the realization of the right to food requires a whole-of-government approach, coordinated across various ministries, including those responsible for health, education, employment, social affairs and agriculture. For instance, for the multiplier effects of school-feeding programmes to be maximized, coordinated action between departments responsible for agriculture, education and employment is required. Such a strategy should include targets, defined through a participatory process, and independent monitoring of their achievement within specified time frames. The outcomes to be achieved should be defined through indicators based on the normative components of the right to food, and disaggregated by ethnicity, age and gender in order to ensure that a gender-sensitive approach will be adopted in all sectors, and that multiple forms of discrimination, such as that experienced by older women and indigenous women, is tracked and addressed effectively. The systematic collection of gender-disaggregated data is key to this objective. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 47 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | In previous reports, the Special Rapporteur emphasized the added value of a gender impact analysis of trade and investment agreements and contract farming schemes (A/HRC/19/59/Add.5, principle 5, and A/66/262, para. 21). All public policies that address food security - whether social programmes, agricultural policies or rural development policies - should ensure that greater attention is paid to women. This should not be simply in order to reach them more effectively, but also to ensure that their views are systematically sought in the design, implementation and evaluation of programmes. One way in which this could be encouraged is by incentivizing public administrations to set targets related to gender equality, and rewarding, through a system of premiums, public officials who reach the targets. Chile's Program for Improved Public Management (PIPM) provides an example: since 2002, almost every ministry is required to establish specific goals incorporating the gender dimension into their public policies. The Women's Service assesses the efforts made and the tools used, and the Ministry of Finance establishes the corresponding monetary bonuses. In addition, the programme is complemented by the incorporation of gender advisors in each ministry, as well as a Women´s Agenda and a long-term Plan for Equal Opportunities. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 46 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Social audits can also be an effective means of empowering women within the local communities, if their views are sought expressly and if the community audit exercise is only considered valid if women are adequately represented. Social audits can take different forms: a public report to the village assembly by government officials on the use of funds allocated to certain programmes and on the allocations to the beneficiaries (whether they are individuals employed in cash-for-work schemes or schools supported in school-feeding schemes); publication of revenues and disbursements on the Internet, which would enable non-governmental organizations to track instances of misuse or diversion of funds; citizens' report cards, as in India or the Philippines; community score cards, as in Kenya and the Gambia; or budgetary audits as those conducted by Javanese farmers in Indonesia. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 45 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | For this reason also, interventions aimed at improving the situation of women should be empowering. Social protection programmes should define the beneficiaries as rights-holders who can make claims against the administrations in charge of delivery, and beneficiaries should be informed of their rights and access to claims mechanisms should eb ensured. In addition to ensuring decentralized monitoring of the implementation of social programmes and providing a safeguard against corruption or discrimination, this will contribute to empowering beneficiaries, in particular women, who are generally treated as passive recipients of programmes that are intended to help them without including them as active participants. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 44 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | The transformative approach implies that as policies seek to accommodate the specific needs of women, they should also seek to subvert traditional gendered divisions of roles. The two objectives are not necessarily easy to reconcile, but they should be prioritized in the design and implementation of programmes and given careful, context-sensitive consideration. In public works programmes for instance, where a gender-blind approach may lead to the de facto exclusion of women, the specific contributions and needs of women should be acknowledged, such as access to nurseries or adapted schedules, in order to enable them to effectively benefit from the programmes. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 43 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Such transformative approach is clearly required under human rights law. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women affirms that "a change in the traditional role of men as well as the role of women in society and in the family is needed to achieve full equality between men and women" (preamble, 14th para). Accordingly, States Parties shall seek, inter alia, to "modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women", and to promote the "recognition of the common responsibility of men and women in the upbringing and development of their children" (art. 5 (a). In reference to this provision, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has urged States to combat patriarchal attitudes and stereotypes regarding the roles and responsibilities of women and men within the family and society at large (women being considered as having the primary responsibility for child-rearing and domestic tasks, and men being considered the main breadwinners) and to reject the concept that assigns the role of "head of the household" to men. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 42 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | A second requirement is achieving the right combination of measures that recognize the specific obstacles women face (particularly time poverty and restricted mobility resulting from their role in the "care" economy), and measures that seek to transform the existing gender division of roles by redistributing tasks both within the household and in other spheres. As long as we simply recognize the role of women in the "care" economy by accommodating their specific needs, the existing division of roles within the household and associated gender stereotypes will remain in place, and could even be reinforced. Redistributing roles and challenging the associated gender stereotypes require a transformative approach, whereby the support provided to women not only recognizes their specific needs, but seen provides the opportunity to question existing social and cultural norms. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 41 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Certain investments can significantly reduce the burden that household chores impose on women. In rural areas, such measures include the provision of water services and afforestation projects to reduce the time spent fetching water and fuelwood. In both rural and urban areas, measures would include the establishment or strengthening of child-care services and care for the elderly or persons with illness/disability. By reducing the time poverty of women, their economic opportunities would expand, since it would be easier for them to seek employment outside the household; access incomes and increase their economic independence, which, in turn, would strengthen their bargaining position within the household. In order for such opportunities to be seized, access to education for girls and life-long training must be improved and societal perceptions of gender roles which discriminate against women must be changed. Improved education and employment prospects are mutually reinforcing, as the demand for education (investment in human capital) will increase in proportion to increase in the demand for a qualified female workforce. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 40 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | A first requirement is breaking the cycle of discrimination against women. This does not mean simply removing discriminatory provisions in the law, particularly as regards access to land or other productive resources, but it also requires that the structural causes of de facto discrimination be addressed. In particular, measures should be taken to relieve women of the burden imposed on them by the duties they assume in the "care" economy, and to improve their economic opportunities by better access to education and employment. Older women are particularly at risk of food insecurity as the cumulative effect of discrimination in accessing employment tends to leave older women with disproportionately lower (or no) incomes and pensions in later life; yet older women are expected to take care of other, more dependent members of the household. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 39 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | A human rights-based strategy to address gender discrimination against women includes four complementary requirements. It must relieve women of the burdens of household chores; it must be empowering and challenge the existing division of roles; it must systematically aim at taking into account gender in existing food security strategies; and, as regards governance, it must be part of a multisectoral and multi-year effort, including independent monitoring of progress towards certain targets. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 38 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Involving women in the design, implementation and assessment of all these policies, could therefore have deeply transformative effects on how we conceive of the role of small-scale farming itself. This is why participation matters: it is to ensure that women have real choices. The strengthening of women's cooperatives or encouraging group farming by women's collectives are also important for that reason. Not only should women be able to overcome the obstacles that obstruct their ability to be as productive as men, they should also be able to redefine the priorities of the small-scale farming system, of which they are becoming the main actors. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 37 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | The recognition that women may have different priorities to those of men leads to fundamental questions about the type of support they should be provided. For instance, titling schemes as a means to increase security of tenure may be considered with scepticism if the schemes are captured by men or elites or if it implies encouraging the development of a market for land rights, when land is more than an economic asset for many rural households, particularly women who depend on land for a non-cash type of production to feed their families. Similarly, if microcredit schemes crowd out other forms of support provided to small-scale food producers, it may result in forcing beneficiaries, women in particular, to move towards production for the market, rather than for self-consumption, something which may not correspond to the priorities of women in specific contexts. Developing agricultural research in ways that are more responsive to women's needs may result in greater attention being paid to the preservation of the resource base on which they rely, not only for agricultural production but also for domestic needs (medicinal plants, fuelwood, wild fruit). It may also result in more attention being paid to the more nutritious food crops, rather than to only staple crops, particularly cereals; and in choices in agricultural research that focus more on the post-harvesting phase - not simply on the prospects of selling the produce in high-value markets, but also on the possibility of preserving food from losses, the nutritional value of the food that is produced for consumption within the household, or the impact a particular variety may have on the time constraints of women. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 36 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Finally, in order to make a stronger contribution to poverty alleviation and to women's empowerment, agricultural research and development could take into account the specific constraints faced by women and their preferences. For instance, women may prefer crop varieties that can be more easily prepared for the family or that are easier to cultivate, for instance, those that are less threatened by weeds or can be easily husked. Because of the obstacles women face in accessing credit, they may prefer to grow crops following agro-ecological, low-external-input techniques, which also avoid the need to transport bags of fertilizers, which could be difficult in the absence of adequate means of transportation. Rural women possess traditional farming knowledge and skills that, in many cases, represent a huge, largely untapped potential. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 35 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Second, there is an inherent tension between the hope that microfinance programmes can function as a financially self-sustaining means of addressing rural poverty, and the objective of supporting the poorest women and single women with a low capacity to improve their productivity levels - because they may be poorly qualified or illiterate, or cannot move beyond home-based activities due to their household responsibilities. The result is that while microfinance programmes increasingly target rural women, they mainly benefit the women who already have most assets or who have male relatives to work with them, and often do not reach the poorest, who operate in a "mini-economy" of very small transactions, so small in fact that the transaction costs of dealing with them are too high even for microcredit institutions. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 34 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | The third area is finance. Microcredit schemes often target rural women specifically, who, even more than men, face obstacles in accessing credit. However, far more could be done. First, improved access to loans for rural women does not necessarily imply that women will control the use of the loans. Some microfinance programmes directed at women have been assessed to be successful in increasing the participation of women in decision-making within the household, particularly as regards family planning and the children's education, and other members of the household have sometimes assumed a greater share of the housework since women who benefit from a microcredit programme tend to spend more time on their businesses and contribute more to the household income. The Small Farmers Development Program (SFDP) launched by the Indonesian government in the early 1990s is one example. But, overall evidence is mixed. Because the creditworthiness of women (as measured by loan repayment rates) is higher than that of men, women in practice may be used as convenient "middlemen" by the lending institutions' field workers and by the male members of households. This runs the risk of creating increased tensions within the household when the husband or other male relative does not give the woman the money to allow her to repay the loan on time or when the woman cannot access the loans she has obtained. Women benefiting from microcredit in rural Bangladesh, for instance through the Grameen Bank, only seldom use the loans to run their own businesses, Instead of becoming entrepreneurs themselves, they often use the loans to support the capital of existing businesses that are usually managed by male members in the household or to support their husbands in launching micro-enterprises. Similar results were found in Andra Pradesh, India. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 33 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Women also face discrimination in accessing extension services. First, women are underrepresented among extension services agents. Yet, in some contexts, social or cultural rules may prohibit contacts between a woman farmer and a male agricultural agent, especially when the woman is single, widowed or abandoned. Moreover, male agents may have less understanding for the specific constraints faced by women. Second, extension services tend to presume that any knowledge transmitted to the men will automatically trickle down to the women and so that they benefit equally, and meetings may be organized without taking into account the specific time and mobility constraints of women. This reinforces the pre-existing imbalances in decision-making within the household and neglects the fact that the needs of women may be different from those of men. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 32 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Women face multiple forms of discrimination in accessing land. As regards land that is inherited, laws in many countries still discriminate against women, and even when the discriminatory elements are removed, the laws are often circumvented under the pressure of social and cultural norms. For instance, where a sister could inherit land on an equal basis with her brothers, she may accept a lump-sum payment in lieu of her portion of the land in order to maintain good relations with her brothers. As regards land that is acquired during marriage, in a number of regions, particularly in South Asia, a separation of property regime is applied, according to which assets brought into the marriage or acquired during marriage remain the individual property of the spouse who acquired said assets from his or her personal funds. But this leads to deeply inequitable outcomes, as it does not recognize the important non-monetary contribution that women make to the household by looking after the house, child-rearing, caring for the elderly, or various other chores. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 31 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Access to land is key in this regard. In an earlier report (A/65/281), the Special Rapporteur discussed the vital role of access to land for small-scale agricultural producers, and the importance of addressing the discrimination women face in that regard. The right of women to have equal access to land is explicitly addressed by the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and in numerous Human Rights Council and General Assembly resolutions on the right to food. At the 2010 High-level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly on the Millennium Development Goals, Heads of State and Government also committed to promoting and protecting women's equal access to property and to land, as well as to productive resources. Indeed, land is more than an economic asset that women should be allowed to use productively. It is also a means of empowerment, as the greater economic independence that results from land ownership enhances the woman's role in decision-making and allows her to garner more social, family and community support. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 30 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Concerns have been expressed about the impact that the feminization of agriculture may have on local food security, given the obstacles women face which negatively affect their productivity. Indeed, women often have little legal protection or rights to property ownership, and they face cultural and social norms that hinder their ability to improve productivity. How can these challenges be met? In the longer term, improving education for women and expanding opportunities for them in off-farm employment are key. But for the large number of women who depend on agriculture, including, increasingly, urban and peri-urban agriculture (see A/HRC/19/59, para. 44), it is equally important - and urgent - to improve women's opportunities to thrive as producers. Gender-sensitive agricultural policies are required, consistent with guideline 8.6 of the Right to Food Guidelines concerning women's full and equal participation in the economy and the right of women to inherit and possess land and other property, and access to productive resources, including credit, land, water and appropriate technologies. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 29 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Due to prevalent societal norms and gender roles, their higher average levels of education, and the fact that they are less constrained, men are often better placed to seize opportunities arising from employment creation in the industry and services sectors. The result is that, with some exceptions (e.g. women migration for household work), men tend to migrate first from rural areas, for longer periods and to further destinations. Women stay behind in the village - especially relatively older women, beyond 35 years of age, who are poorly educated and less independent - to take care of the children and the elderly, and increasingly, also to tend the family plot of land. Data in this area are often imprecise and difficult to interpret, partly because of the lack of gender-disaggregated data, as much of women's contribution to "subsistence" agriculture goes unreported in official statistics, and because the share of women's employment in agriculture varies from crop to crop and from activity to activity - ploughing, for instance, remains predominantly a task performed by men. Nonetheless, overall, this feminization of agriculture is well documented. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 28 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Under asset transfer schemes, productive assets, such as small livestock, are provided to poor households to support their income generation activities. Bangladesh's Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction - Targeting the Ultra Poor (CFPR) programme, launched in 2002 by the non-governmental organization Building Resources Across Communities (BRAC), demonstrates the benefits of adopting a gender-sensitive approach. For instance, it takes into account the fact that female-headed households are often more labour-constrained (both due to "care" responsibilities of women and the lower ratio of income earners to dependents in those households) and provides assets, such as poultry, which require less labour to maintain and become a source of income. BRAC also seeks to strengthen the beneficiary's capacity to use the assets productively, and encourages the political empowerment of the poor. The programme provides for the establishment of seven-member Village Poverty Reduction Committees, comprising representatives of BRAC, beneficiaries of CFPR, as well as respected individuals drawn from the landed and wealthy elites of the local community. Instead of aiming to reduce the power of the local elites as part of the priorities of poverty-reduction interventions, the programme seeks the active involvement of local notables in order to enlist their support. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 27d | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Women should be involved in the design and evaluation of public works programmes. This could ensure that the right balance is struck between the need for a gender-sensitive approach and the risk of reinforcement of gender stereotyping. It could also help determine the modes of payment, in particular whether payment should be in the form of food or cash. While cash payments leave the beneficiaries greater choice, it may also facilitate the appropriation by men of women's wages, especially if the payment is not deposited electronically into a bank account in the woman's name. Also, cash payment may not be the preferred solution if purchasing food is time-consuming or if markets are unreliable due, for instance, to the lack of stability of supply of certain staple foods or the high volatility of prices in the market. Indeed, women may express a preference for payment in the form of food rations or payment on a daily basis, rather than on a monthly basis, especially if their priority concern is the daily subsistence of their families. Such issues can only be addressed through effective participation of women in the shaping of programmes intended to benefit them. Participation is thus both an end in itself - a source of empowerment - and a means - as it can significantly increase the effectiveness of the programmes and their ability to make a difference to women. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 27c | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | The assets created by the programme could serve to ease the situation of rural women in the areas concerned, consistent with the aim of reducing the burden that they shoulder. For instance, digging boreholes or planting trees can reduce the time women spend fetching water or fuelwood in the community where such work is performed. As illustrated by Ethiopia's cash-for-work Productive Safety Net Programme, public works programmes could serve to support agricultural work on the private land of female-headed households which generally suffer from chronic labour shortage. Public works could serve to improve physical infrastructure in rural areas and establish food-processing technologies, in order to reduce the drudgery of cooking and laundry. Public works programmes also could include health extension work, adult literacy or HIV/AIDS prevention, all of which could be immediately attractive for women. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 27b | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Similar self-exclusion may occur where the work proposed under the public works programmes is considered too demanding physically (more suitable for men) or violates certain cultural norms as to which tasks are suitable for women. The challenge in this case would be to ensure that the division of tasks on the programme takes into account the specific constraints faced by women, without reinforcing gender stereotypes. This may be done by adopting a phased approach. During a first phase, some work may be designated as "light" or "moderate" with priority for women, and some work as "heavy" and assigned to men; and certain tasks that are traditionally performed by women could be included in public works programmes, for instance preparing food in community kitchens or maintaining community vegetable gardens. At the same time, it should be ensured that women are paid the same wages as men. During a second phase, in order to reduce the risk that such an approach might reinforce gender stereotypes, women could gradually be encouraged to learn how to perform tasks traditionally assigned to men, so that in time "role-shifting" will occur. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 27a | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Women may choose not to participate in such programmes because of the heavy demands it would impose on them and the difficulties they may have in reconciling the work with their responsibilities in the "care" economy. A system of quotas may be ineffective to address this. The difficulties women may face to participate in public works programmes should therefore be taken into account: their responsibilities in the "care" economy should be recognized and accommodation measures should be adopted. Furthermore, work schedules should take into account the specific time constraints faced by women, and institutionalized child care should be implemented to attract more women. Where child care at the work site is under the responsibility of women who are labour-constrained, because of age or disability, this can further increase the opportunities the programme offers to women. Thus, the MGNREGA includes a provision that "in the event that there are at least five children under the age of six at the worksite, one of the female workers shall be deputed to look after them and paid the same wage as other NREGA workers." However, the implementation of this clause remains highly uneven as most women joining the programme are discouraged from bringing their children to work, and a social audit of the implementation of MGNREGA revealed that 70 per cent of the women interviewed had no access to child-care facilities on the worksite, while 65 per cent were not aware of this provision in the Act. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 27 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Many public works schemes set aside a quota for women. India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), introduced in 2005 and which benefited 52.5 million households in 2009-2010, provides for one third of the employment to be allocated to women. The Rural Maintenance Programme in Bangladesh goes even further; it is an all-women programme, successfully employing over 50,000 rural women to maintain 60,000 miles of earthen roads. While access to employment in such programmes can favour the empowerment of women, paying greater attention to the gender impacts could significantly increase their benefits to women: |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 26 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Public works programmes are designed to provide employment to families who have no other source of income; remuneration is usually in the form of cash (cash-for-work) or food (food-for-work), or a combination of both. Because the work is demanding and the wages are low (or payment is made in the form of food items), only those in genuine need, who have run out of other options, may seek to enter these programmes, which are therefore self-targeting. Public works programmes may serve to create physical infrastructure (such as irrigation schemes, wells or rural roads) or to deliver environmental services (for instance hillside terracing or other landscape arrangements to facilitate the capture of rain water or the planting of trees) that contribute to long-term development aims. |
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Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 25c | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on the right to food | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | [Three concerns have emerged:] Where compliance with the conditionalities requires women to leave the household, it may present an opportunity for them to obtain information about their rights and about practices that can improve nutritional outcomes within their household, and enable them to broaden their social network. But the cultural norms that reduce the mobility of women and their time poverty could make their participation in such programmes impossible. |
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