Women knowledge, skills, labour and leadership in agriculture and food systems are frequently invisible and undervalued. 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 and in the ‘reproductive’ sphere of unpaid and undervalued labour. Examples include i) unequal access to land and productive resources, that limit women’s participation in agriculture, constructing gender roles and identities and resulting, among others, in ii) women under-representation in agricultural organizations; iii) agricultural education reinforcing stereotypes about farming as a male activity; iv) social closure that lead to women being discouraged from taking up tasks or acquiring farming skills. The structural gender inequalities in agriculture are acutely felt by social groups that experience multiple forms of oppression (migrant farmworkers, LGBTIQ+ farmers). These intersecting forms of discrimination pose significant barriers to transformative change in rural areas in Europe.
SWIFT’s overall objective is to foster transitions towards sustainable and inclusive development of rural areas in Europe by favouring the deployment of women-led innovations (WLI) promoting gender equality in rural areas from an intersectional, feminist and human rights-based perspective. This will enable to facilitate a change of framing of food to address the social realities that perpetuate inequalities. The EU’s commitment to purely economic measures of the viability of farming reflects the framing of food as a commodity that does not include the forms of farming more frequently led by women and fails to capture the commitments for the realisation of the right to food. SWIFT will contribute to gender mainstreaming in agricultural policies by providing tools (feminist farm viability indicators; Gender responsive budgeting-GRB) to facilitate the implementation of alternative framings of food.
SWIFT engages in applied feminist innovation studies, adopting a feminist, human rights-based, participatory and inclusive research methodology that applies an intersectional perspective. SWIFT aims to amplify social innovations to confront unequal social, economic and political structures in European agriculture. WLI are grassroots innovations built to challenge structural inequalities in agriculture in rural areas. Through the analysis of 21 WLI in 12 countries inside and outside Europe, SWIFT will study if, and how, agroecological approaches can promote gender equality, resilience and sustainability in rural areas. WLIs are organized into clusters: i) social security schemes; ii) participation in agricultural organizations; iii) access to means of production; iv) access to training, v) mutual support; vi) migrant women farmworkers vii) LGTBQ+ farmers; viii) Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).
The project relies on a multi-actor community of farmers, CSO, NGO and researchers. It comprises 6 WPs designed to facilitate action-research. WP2 and WP3 are focused on deploying WLI while WP4 and WP5 are testing practical tools to introduce alternative framings of food in policies. In WP2 conceptual and methodological tools will be co-designed to analyse WLI. WP3 will amplify innovations through exchanges. WP4 will provide feminist viability indicators of farming and WP5 focuses on enhancing the gender-responsive nature of EU policy. WP1 and WP6 are committed to coordination and communication, respectively.
