A/HRC/31/51 87. The human rights perspective should accommodate a gender analysis for food security, and allows focus on woman as an individual, rather than on the nation, the community, or the household. At the same time, gender analysis should include other social categories such as age, social status, race, ethnicity, and class. Adoption of the right to food approach together with gender base analysis would reveal discrimination and inequality of women in food production cycles and at household level in a more appropriate manner. A person’s ability to acquire nutritious food is closely related to other aspects of the capabilities and rights. For women and girls, discriminatory laws, social norms, values and practices further affect access to food and food security. Moreover, unequal power relations between genders, penetrate both the private and the public sphere, and constrain the decision-making power of women and girls. The discrimination is reinforced when gender inequality is compounded with other forms of exclusion related to income, ethnicity or race. VII. Conclusions 88. Over the last few decades, women have broadened and deepened their involvement in agricultural production as they increasingly shoulder the responsibility for household survival and respond to economic opportunities in commercial agriculture. This phenomenon brought the argument about gender gap in agriculture, where women’s productivity as farmers falls behind that of men, and where women remains less food secure, despite their dominant role is food production. This gender gap occurs because of cultural, legal, and economic barriers, so and eliminating this discrepancy requires a holistic understanding that responds to structural discrimination and failed implementation of attempted solutions. For instance, while international development has focused on providing technical training and access to new agricultural technologies for women, there has been a lack of focus on providing women with land rights and sufficient financial resources. 86 Moreover, women’s responsibility in relation to household food security, simply feeding family and community is totally excluded from such technical and economistic solution. 89. Closing the gender gap in agriculture requires development of gender sensitive policies. Ensuring land rights and reinforcing the rights of girls and women to education, social protection and increasing women’s participation in decision making in a meaningful manner is critical for enhancing women's vital role in advancing agricultural development and food security. Increasing women’s access to and control over assets has been shown to have positive effects on important human development outcomes including household food security, child nutrition, education, and women’s own wellbeing and status within the home and community. Moreover, providing women with essential tools and resources does not require a major investment of resources but can have a huge impact on the formal economy. Respecting, protecting and fulfilling women’s rights will inevitably fix broader problems in food systems in general and can help communities achieve improved development outcomes. 90. The Special Rapporteur provides the following recommendations: In order for States to address discrimination against women in terms of equal labour opportunities, States should: (a) Recognize, reduce and redistribute women’s unpaid care and domestic work, in order to create more opportunities for them to enter the labour market. 86 20 Anna Applefield and Jiwon Jun, Working with Women: An Essential Component of Global Food Security and Agricultural Development, 38 A Letcher F. World AFF. 185, 186 (2014)

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