Gender, Nutrition, and the Human Right to Adequate Food

This book introduces the human right to adequate food and nutrition as evolving concept and identifies two structural "disconnects" fueling food insecurity for a billion people, and disproportionally affecting women, children, and rural food producers: the separation of womens rights from their right to adequate food and nutrition, and the fragmented attention to food as commodity and the medicalization of nutritional health. Three conditions arising from these disconnects are discussed: structural violence and discrimination frustrating the realization of womens human rights, as well as their private and public contributions to food and nutrition security for all; many womens experience of their and their childrens simultaneously independent and intertwined subjectivities during pregnancy and breastfeeding being poorly understood in human rights law and abused by poorly-regulated food and nutrition industry marketing practices; and the neoliberal economic systems interference both with the autonomy and self-determination of women and their communities and with the strengthening of sustainable diets based on democratically governed local food systems. The book calls for a social movement-led reconceptualization of the right to adequate food toward incorporating gender, womens rights, and nutrition, based on the food sovereignty framework.