SPEAKING
FREELY Food justice for women in
India By Kiran Sharma
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
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Poverty has
traditionally been defined in income or
expenditure terms and can be viewed in relative or
absolute terms. Poverty and food security are
complex and multidimensional in nature. Poverty
leads to under nutrition and food insecurity by
limiting poor people's access to food.
About three-fourth of India's population
living in the rural sector is reeling under abject
poverty, illiteracy, ill-health, unemployment, low
quality of life and so on. Food insecurity causes
poverty, vulnerability and livelihood insecurity,
but is at the same time also
a result of these
conditions. It is widely accepted that poverty is
currently the principal root cause of food
insecurity in households. It is also clear that in
several societies, households are not homogenous
entities, since within a household, women and
girls often tend to be relatively more
undernourished.
Gender constitutes the
most profound differentiating division. A gendered
analysis of poverty reveals not simply its unequal
incidence but also that both cause and effect are
deeply gendered. Women face a greater risk of
poverty than men. The gender disparity is most
visible among female- headed households, notably
lone mothers and single pensioners. Food security
at the level of each individual is hence
important.
Internationally accepted
Millennium Development Goals (MDG) recognize that
hunger and food insecurity are the core
afflictions of poor people, and specifically sets
out to halve the proportion of extremely poor and
hungry people in the world. Amartya Sen added a
new dimension to food security and emphasized the
"access" to food through what he called
'entitlements' - a combination of what one can
produce, exchange in the market along with state
or other socially provided supplies.
The
1995 World Food Summit declared, "Food security at
the individual, household, regional, national and
global levels exists when all people, at all
times, have physical and economic access to
sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their
dietary needs and food preferences for an active
and healthy life". The declaration further
recognizes that "poverty eradication is essential
to improve access to food".
The
International Food Policy Research Institute
(IFPRI)'s 2008 Global Hunger Index says that with
over 200 million people insecure about their daily
bread, the Indian scenario is 'alarming' in terms
of hunger and malnutrition. The first ever Indian
Hunger Index, released along with the Global
Hunger Index, found that not a single state in
India fell in the 'low hunger' or 'moderate
hunger' categories. Madhya Pradesh had the most
severe level of hunger in the country, followed by
Jharkhand and Bihar. Punjab and Kerala scored the
best on the Index. India ranks 66 among 88
countries in the hunger index.
Food
security, as internationally understood, involves
physical, economic and social access to a balanced
diet, safe drinking water, environmental hygiene
and primary health care. Such a definition will
involve concurrent attention to the availability
of food in the market, the ability to buy needed
food and the capability to absorb and utilize the
food in the body. Thus, food and non-food factors
that is, drinking water, environmental hygiene and
primary health care are involved in food security.
Profiles of the poor The
composition of the poor has been changing and
rural poverty becomes more concentrated in the
agricultural lab our and artisan households and
urban poverty in the households of people who
survive doing casual labor. The share of
agricultural lab our households, which accounted
for 41% of rural poor in 1993-94 increased to 47%
in 1999-00. In contrast, the share of
self-employed in agriculture among the rural poor
dropped from 33% to 28%.
Casual lab our
households accounted for 32% of the urban
population living in poverty in 1999-00,
increasing from 25% in 1993-94. The increase in
its share was due to both the increased dependence
of urban households on urban casual lab our market
as well as higher incidence of poverty among urban
casual lab our households. It needs to be
recognized that increased dependence of rural and
urban households on causal lab our market exposes
the poor to market risks and tends to increase
transient poverty, whereby households move in and
out of poverty due to fluctuations in the lab our
market.
Women versus hunger In
recent years there has been an increasing trend to
incorporate the gender dimension in analysis of
poverty. The feminization of poverty is a term
used to describe the overwhelming representation
of women among the poor. "Women tend to be
disproportionately represented among the poor …
the poorer the family the more likely it is to be
headed by a women".
Poverty studies from
both developed and developing countries show that
woman more than men are subjected to relative as
well as absolute poverty. The argument is that
poverty and gender at times can be interrelated.
The incidence of poverty among females tended to
be marginally higher in both rural and urban areas
in India. The lower percentage of female persons
among the poor despite higher female poverty ratio
was due to adverse sex ratio. It should be noted
that the above measure of gender poverty ignores
intra-household inequalities in consumption.
There are other dimensions of poverty such
as food insecurity, malnutrition and health
associated more with female members. The role of
women as producers and providers of food is often
overshadowed by their primary role as care-givers.
However, in most of the developing countries,
including India, large number of women is engaged
in agriculture, primarily the production and
processing of food.
With male-selective
migration from rural areas on the increase, women
are often left behind to take care of both family
and farm on their own. With women-headed
households being more prone to poverty, wages
being unfavorable to women in general and access
to financial, technical and other support services
being denied to them, the poor nutritional status
of the rural population is common. It is
therefore, obvious that women play a vital role in
food production and agricultural activities.
As Diana Pearce coined the term
'feminization of poverty' which implies a new
phenomenon: "Women have always experienced more
poverty than men".
The conceptualization
of poverty in this way is also helpful from the
perspective of understanding and combating women's
poverty. Following Atkinson, Stephen Jenkins
suggests that a feminist concept of poverty can be
described in terms of an 'individual right to a
minimum degree of potential economic
independence'. Naila Kabeer (2003) argues that
household poverty is determined by poor women's
highly unequal role in the lab our market.
Female lab our force participation is
highest among the poorest households in countries
such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, where
social norms mainly constrain women to very
insecure and poorly paid work in the informal
sector. India suffers severe deprivations in
education and health - especially in the Northern
states, where caste, class, and gender inequities
are particularly strong. Human development cannot
be achieved without taking the role of women into
account. Poverty often hits women and women-headed
households the hardest, and women have fewer
economic and political opportunities to improve
their well-being and that of their families.
Policies and programs on food
security Food and nutrition security
depends upon a complex interplay of macro policy,
agricultural policy, food and nutrition policy,
access to education, health, potable drinking
water, and sanitation, income and employment
security, and social security. Food and nutrition
security through government interventions in
food-based programs include the Public
Distribution System (PDS), the Integrated Child
Development Scheme (ICDS), the School's Mid-day
Meal Scheme, Food-for-Work (FFW) and Antyodaya
Anna Yojana (AAY) etc.
The National Food
Security Act, 2009 assures that every BPL family
in the country shall be entitled to 25 kg of wheat
or rice per month at the rate of Rs.3/- per kg.
The law is also proposed to be used to bring about
systemic reforms in the Public Distribution System
(PDS). Apart from the PDS, the two major
programmes such as ICDS and Mid-day Meal Scheme
aimed at providing nutritional security to
pregnant women and lactating mothers, and young
pre-school goers and school-goers, respectively.
Both programmes are currently being closely
monitored by the Supreme Court, which has given
specific directions for strengthening them.
Conclusion The gender aspects of
social security assume significance as it is
widely recognized that, the position of women is
particularly vulnerable to continued poverty and
destitution when they attain old age and/or are
widowed or divorced. The first group - widows -
mainly constitute female-headed households.This
provides sufficient evidence to indicate that the
role of women in ensuring food security at macro
level as well as at the level of the household and
the individual is a manifold one.
It is
also apparent that in India, poverty is deeply
embedded in social constructs that impact
adversely on a woman's economic status to society
as well as her nutrition and health status, and
food security caused from unequal distribution of
food at home. Consequently, the discrimination
pattern of food consumption at home is the one
cause of malnutrition among women.
While
much progress has been made on the food production
and availability front, adequate nutrition
outcomes cannot be assured without unraveling the
complexities of the link between food security and
gender. Ensuring equity in women's rights to land,
property, capital assets, wages and livelihood
opportunities would undoubtedly impact positively
on the issue, but underlying the deep inequity in
woman's access to nutrition is her own
unquestioning acceptance of her status as an
unequal member of the family and society.
Eventually, gender empowerment alone is likely to
be the key to the resolution of the hunger
challenge in the country.
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows
guest writers to have their say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing. Articles submitted for this section
allow our readers to express their opinions and do
not necessarily meet the same editorial standards
of Asia Times Online's regular contributors.
Kiran Sharma is a PhD
Scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi,
India
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