Reflections on the Gender Conference

Amidst the poly-crises of the just-passed COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing wars in different regions in various forms, the subsequent food and nutritional insecurity have not only aggravated gender inequality worldwide but also made the achievement of SDG 5 (“Achieving gender equality and empower all women and girls”) a distant goal or a daydream. The impact on the agri-food systems has been even bigger due to the inherent vulnerabilities it possesses. In light of this, the 2023 CGIAR Gender Conference on “From research to impact: Towards just and resilient agri-food systems” took place during 9-12 October, in New Delhi, India, the aim of which was to share the outcomes of gender research that are being done by the researchers throughout the world and the on-ground knowledge of different stakeholders fostering gender and inclusion, to catalyse and circulate scientific dialogues and effective policy recommendations. The four-day conference included a total of 4 Plenary sessions, 28 Paper sessions, 8 Capacity strengthening sessions, 6 Poster sessions and 6 Panel sessions, making it a compact learning platform.

The Rupantar project team members attended the conference and presented papers and posters with great enthusiasm in different important sessions like “From crisis to catalyst: Women redefining resilience in agri-food systems”, “Household dynamics of decision making, asset ownership, labour, and empowerment”, “Towards systemic change: Challenging inequalities in institutions and policies”, “The gendered face of climate change, adaptation and resilience” and more. The articles aimed to present the complex tradeoffs and synergies prevalent in the dynamism of women’s roles and challenges vis-à-vis their male counterparts in agri-food systems of the Eastern Gangetic Plains. For example, the paper entitled “Does COVID-19 impact female and male farmers differentially? An insight from a study in Eastern Gangetic Plains of India” unequivocally found little and non-significant differences between male and female respondents, which indicates that women farmers were equally concerned about the constraints and concerns faced during the just-passed epidemic and points out their increasing decision-making behaviour. The key learning for Rupantar, that this analysis brings out, is that the project Rupantar may very well be aligned to equally address the farm women as the key change agents for diversifying agri-food systems in the Eastern Gangetic Plains.

The conference ended with a vivid impact with shared solutions from collaborative experiences and research. It made it obvious that the policies should be accountable, evidence-based and localised. Those should not be fit-for-all and must include location-specificity to be effective and efficient on the ground and should be diverted towards nutrition-sensitive food systems with multifaceted and multidisciplinary solutions. Mere food security will not bring the expected resilience. Changing the crop systems with ecologically sustainable crops in the long run should be advocated. Sensitising both female and male members (not only the female members) of the families will be a must as both are the catalysts and drivers of an effective and impactful change and inclusion.