Project description
Promoting gender equality in European agricuture
Despite the crucial contributions of women to European agriculture, they remain discriminated against in diverse ways. Their exclusion from social security schemes and low levels of female farm ownership are indicative of structural inequalities. The barriers to gender equality in European agriculture are socio-cultural, economic and political, including policies that frame food as a commodity and exclude the reproductive dimensions of farming. To advance gender equality, the EU-funded SWIFT project will provide new insights and co-create novel approaches with 21 agricultural women-led innovations in 12 countries distributed across Europe, as well as 4 in Brazil and the USA. SWIFT will provide theoretical and practical tools, such as gender-responsive budgeting and feminist farm viability indicators, to enable a change towards more just, effective and diversified farming.
Objective
SWIFT’s overall objective is to foster transitions towards sustainable, balanced and inclusive development of rural areas in Europe by favouring the deployment of women-led innovations (WLI) acting for change in agriculture, promoting gender equality in rural areas from an intersectional, feminist and human rights-based perspective. SWIFT pursues this by engaging in applied feminist innovation studies research better reflecting feminist and human-rights based approaches. This will enable to facilitate a change of framing in agriculture to address 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 agricultural sector 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 and in the ‘reproductive’ sphere of unpaid and undervalued labour that occurs on the farm, in the family and community. Some examples include i) unequal access to land and productive resources, that shape and limit women’s participation in agriculture, constructing gender roles and identities and resulting, among other things, in ii) women under-representation in agricultural organizations and holding very few decision-making positions; iii) current agricultural education and training that reinforce stereotypes about farming as a male activity and which do not encourage young women to pursue agricultural careers; iv) social closure, characterised by interactional dynamics of discrimination, exclusion and/or harassment, that lead to women being discouraged from taking up tasks or acquiring relevant farming skills. The structural gender inequalities in agriculture are acutely felt by social groups that experience multiple and intersecting forms of oppression, including migrant farmworkers and LGBTIQ+ farmers. These intersecting forms of discrimination have not yet been extensively documented, however, they constitute significant barriers to transformative change in rural areas in Europe.
One of the main difficulties for gender mainstreaming in agricultural policies is the framing of food. The EU’s primary commitment to purely economic measures of viability of farming businesses reflects the idea of food as a commodity that does not include the forms of farming that tend to be led by women. The framing of food as a commodity also fails to capture the commitments that have been made to the realisation of the right to adequate food. SWIFT will contribute to gender mainstreaming in agricultural and food policies by providing theoretical and practical tools (feminist farm viability indicators and Gender responsive budgeting in policies) to favor a change of framing in those policies that will facilitate the development and implementation of alternative framings of food.
Methodologically, SWIFT adopts a feminist, human rights-based, participatory and inclusive research methodology that applies an intersectional perspective, thereby rendering visible diverse experiences of inequality and giving a voice to those who are most marginalised. SWIFT aims to reinforce and amplify innovations led by marginalised actors to confront unequal social, economic and political structures in European agricultural and food systems. We defined WLI in agriculture as grassroots innovations built to challenge structural inequalities in agriculture in rural areas. Many of the WLI that are the focus of SWIFT have emerged under the broad umbrella of alternative food networks and have demands connected to the human right to adequate food. Through the analysis of WLI, SWIFT will study if and how agroecological approaches to food systems can promote gender equality in r
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences sociology social issues social inequalities
- social sciences sociology gender studies gender equality
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture
- social sciences political sciences political policies civil society
You need to log in or register to use this function
We are sorry... an unexpected error occurred during execution.
You need to be authenticated. Your session might have expired.
Thank you for your feedback. You will soon receive an email to confirm the submission. If you have selected to be notified about the reporting status, you will also be contacted when the reporting status will change.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
-
HORIZON.2.6 - Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment
MAIN PROGRAMME
See all projects funded under this programme -
HORIZON.2.6.3 - Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Areas
See all projects funded under this programme
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions
See all projects funded under this funding scheme
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-CL6-2022-COMMUNITIES-01
See all projects funded under this callCoordinator
Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
28006 MADRID
Spain
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.