1000 words analysis

Gender equality, food security and the sustainable development goals Bina Agarwal1,2

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ScienceDirect

Abstract

This paper examines the potential and limitations of SDG 5

(Gender Equality) in helping to achieve household food

security. The potential lies in the attention it pays to women’s

access to land and natural resources, which can significantly

enhance women’s ability to produce and procure food. Its

limitations lie in a lack of attention to the production constraints

that women farmers face; its failure to recognise forests and

fisheries as key sources of food; and its lack of clarity on which

natural resources women need access to and why. Moreover,

other goals which bear on food security as important providers

of nutrition, such as SDG 15 as it relates to forests and SDG

14 as it relates to fish resources, make no mention of gender

equality, nor does SDG 13 (Climate action) recognise the

vulnerabilities of women farmers. A bold interpretation of SDG

5 and establishing synergies with other SDGs could provide

ways forward. This includes not only SDGs which recognise the

importance of gender equality, such as SDGs 1, 2, and 13 on

poverty, hunger, and climate change respectively, but also

SDGs 14 and 15 whose silence on gender could prove

detrimental not just to attaining food security, but also to

furthering their stated objectives of resource conservation.

Addresses 1Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, Manchester

M13 9PL, United Kingdom 2 Institute of Economic Growth, University Enclave, Delhi 110007, India

Corresponding author: Agarwal, Bina (bina.india@gmail.com)

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2018, 34:26–32

This review comes from a themed issue on Sustainability Science

Edited by Ken E Giller, Ira Martina Drupady, Lorenza B Fontana &

Johan A Oldekop

For a complete overview see the Issue

Available online 21st September 2018

Received: 27 November 2017; Accepted: 16 July 2018

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2018.07.002

1877-3435/ã 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Introduction Since the late 1970s, we have seen the launch of several

initiatives to monitor the development performance of

countries, by quantifying their progress in various dimen-

sions of human well-being. UNDP’s Human Development

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2018, 34:26–32

Report and the World Bank’s World Development Report,

both produced annually, are among the best known of these

initiatives. In the 2000s, however, there was a notable move

beyond evaluative statistics to setting globally agreed-upon

timebound goals of development. The eight Millennium

Development Goals (2000–2015) were a start, but the

United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

launched in 2016 constitute the most ambitious attempt to

date. Presented as ‘a universal call to action to end poverty,

protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy peace

and prosperity’, the SDGs combine economic, social and

environmental dimensions, with a particular emphasis on

social inclusion. The 17 Goals and 160 Targets are to be

achieved by 2030. Identified through a long process of

interaction between international organisations, govern-

ments and civil society, they reflect both the ambition of

this multi-scale endeavour and the compromises that arise

in building consensus among diverse actors.

This paper focuses on SDG 5 — which aims at Gender

Equality — to address the question: can this Goal help

ensure household food security? The concept of food

security is of course complex, and would encompass

not only food availability in an aggregate sense but also

its distribution among people, and not only caloric ade-

quacy but also nutritional sufficiency. The diversity of

food produced or procured also matters, as does the

environmental sustainability of food production systems.

To what extent can SDG 5 help fulfil these objectives?

I argue that SDG 5 holds substantial potential but also has

serious limitations on these counts. The potential lies in its

focus on two elements which have a critical bearing on

household and national food security: women’s access to

land and property, and their access to natural resources.

Secure land rights can enhance the productivity of women

farmers whose proportions are growing with the feminisa-

tion of agriculture, and also improve intra-household nutri-

tional allocations since owning property increases women’s

bargaining power within families. Access to natural

resources, such as forests and fisheries, can provide impor-

tantadditional sourcesofnutritionaldiversity, sincewomen

are the main gatherers of food from forests and the principal

producers in small-scale and inland fisheries. This potential

could be extended by teaming up with Goals 1 and 2

(ending poverty and hunger respectively).

Yet there are limitations, since some key related Goals —

in particular SDG 15 (Life on land) as it relates to forests,

and SDG 14 (Life below water) as it relates to marine and

www.sciencedirect.com

Gender equality, food security and the sustainable development goals Agarwal 27

coastal ecosystems — make no mention of gender equal-

ity in access to these resources, nor does SDG 13 (Climate

action) recognise the particular vulnerabilities of women

farmers. Indeed there is little recognition in these SDGs

that forests and fisheries are significant sources of food

and nutritional diversity, or that women play an important

role in procuring from them. Moreover, SDG 5 itself

provides no clarity on which natural resources it seeks

women’s access to and how. Much will therefore depend

on whether the gender equality goal can create synergies

with other relevant SDGs, and whether these other

SDGs, in turn, recognise that they need a focus on gender

equality for achieving their own stated objectives. These

links between SDG 5 and other SDGs which are detailed

below have not been explored earlier from the perspec-

tive of food security and natural resources. But first

consider what roles women play in food provisioning.

Women and food provisioning Roles and constraints

Women play a central role in household and national food

security, as food producers, household food managers, and

consumers.

As producers, women constitute a substantial and growing

proportion of agricultural workers, as more men than

women tend to leave the agricultural sector first. In

2012, 43 per cent of all farm workers in Asia and

47 per cent in Africa were female, with percentages close

to 50 or higher in Southeast and East Asia (http://faostat.

fao.org). In some of the world’s major rice producing

regions, half or more of the agricultural work force is thus

female. And these proportions have been growing glob-

ally, except in northern Europe, leading to a gradual

feminisation of agriculture [1]. In addition women pro-

vide most of the labour time for food processing and

preparation [2].

Table 1

Gender inequality in land access: developing countries

Region and country Indicator

South Asia

Nepal Percentage landowning HHs in which women o

India: Karnataka state Percentage rural landowners who are women (2

Africa

Kenya Women as a percentage of registered landhold

Ghana Percentage HHs where women own land (1991

Ten countries (average)a Percentage of women owning land, solely or jo

Latin Americab

Peru Women owning land (solely or jointly) as a perc

Mexico Women owning land (solely or jointly) as a perc

Paraguay Women owning land (solely or jointly) as a perc

Notes: HH, households. a The countries are Burkina Faso, Burundi, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwa

based on the Demographic and Health surveys in these countries. For ass b For assumptions underlying the calculations, see Deere and Leon [4].

www.sciencedirect.com

Women’s ability to contribute effectively to agriculture,

however, depends crucially on their access to land, which

is the most important productive resource for farmers. But

they are seriously disadvantaged in this respect due to

male bias in inheritance laws, in social norms which

restrict effective implementation of these laws, in land

markets, as well as in government land distribution

schemes [3,4]. Although country-level gender-disaggre-

gated data on land ownership is limited and varies across

regions, Table 1 gives some illustrative figures. We note

that in Nepal women owned land in only 14 per cent of all

landowning households, according to its 2001 census. For

India, there are no reliable country-level data on women’s

land ownership, but regional surveys find low levels even

in the less gender-biased southern states: for example,

only 20 per cent of rural landowners in Karnataka are

women. And of India’s operational holdings (namely land

cultivated but not necessarily owned) – only 12.8 per cent

are cultivated by women, covering just 10.4 per cent of

cultivated area (Agricultural Census 2010-11 [5]). In

Ghana, women own land in just 10 per cent of households;

in Kenya, only 5 per cent of registered landholders are

female; and information collated for ten other African

countries by Doss et al. [6] shows that, although on

average 39 per cent of the sampled women own land,

only 12 per cent are sole owners (the figures are 48 and

31 respectively for men). Latin America similarly shows a

wide gender gap, with just 22–30 per cent of landowners

being women, varying by country. Moreover, the control

that women owners can exercise over land (e.g. rights to

lease, mortgage, sell, or use as collateral) is more restricted

than men’s [3,7].

Women also have poor access to credit, irrigation, ferti-

lizers, technology, information on new agricultural prac-

tices, and marketing infrastructure [7,11]. These disad-

vantages multiply if we factor in climate change, since any

technical advances in, say, heat resistant or water

Percentage Source

wn land (2001) 14.0 Allendorf [8]

010-11) 20.0 Swaminathan et al. [9]

ers (c. 2002) 5.0 Deere and Doss [10]

–2) 10.0 Deere and Doss [10]

intly 39.0 Doss et al. [6]

entage of all land owners (2000) 25.3 Deere and Leon [4]

entage of all land owners (2000) 22.4 Deere and Leon [4]

entage of all land owners (2000) 30.2 Deere and Leon [4]

nda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. The calculations are

umptions underlying the calculations, see Doss et al. [6].

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2018, 34:26–32

28 Sustainability Science

3 Of the estimated 1.6 million deaths that take place annually from

inhaling fuel smoke from cooking indoors, 60 per cent are of women

([24]:28).

conserving crop varieties, or in practices for adaptation

and mitigation, are less likely to reach them. This does

not portend well for foodgrain availability, especially in

South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa where the yields of all

major foodcrops are predicted to decline drastically with

climate change [12]. Globally, even without climate

change, exceptional efforts will be needed to feed the

world population, which is expected to reach 9.8 billion

by 2050, as projected by the United Nations Department

of Economic and Social Affairs. With climate change, if

food output lags behind population, per capita calories

available in developing countries in 2050 are likely to be

lower than in 2000, resulting, by some estimates, in 20 per

cent higher child malnutrition than without climate

change [12]. As agriculture gets feminised, the burden

of adapting to or mitigating the adverse yield effects will

fall increasing on women, who have fewer resources at

their command for this purpose. Women’s efforts to adapt

to climate change could also lead them to shift to less

labour intensive but also less bio-diverse or nutritious

crops [13], even as the importance of nutrition-sensitive

agriculture is becoming increasingly evident [14].

In terms of consumption, any reduction in household

food availability with climate change, not just in calories

but also in proteins and minerals, is likely to affect

women and girls more than men and boys, given

intra-family inequality in food distribution. In the

1970s and 1980s, these inequalities were observed not

only in anthropometric and malnourishment indices but

even in direct measures of caloric intakes in poor house-

holds, and in the quality of food consumed by both the

poor and the rich [1,15]. Today the evidence on caloric

intakes is more mixed, but other gender disadvantages

persist, as observed in South Asia in terms of undernour-

ished and underweight children [16,17]. Moreover, glob-

ally, an estimated 613 million women today are anaemic,

especially but not only when pregnant and lactating [18].

And in societies where women are expected to eat last,

they are more likely to be affected if leftover food

becomes toxic as temperatures rise with climate change.

Higher temperatures will also extend women’s labour

time for food processing and preservation. And gender

inequalities, cross-cutting with poverty and social

inequalities such as of caste, ethnicity or race, will tend

to compound these effects. Based on FAO’s Food Inse-

curity Experience Scale Survey of 2014–15, UN

Women’s calculations show that in two-thirds of

141 countries, a larger proportion of women than men

report food insecurity, with women in sub-Saharan Africa

being the most vulnerable [19].

This vulnerability could be reduced to some extent, if

women as family food managers had more autonomy in

making decisions on intra-household food distribution, an

aspect which is found to be affected especially by

inequalities in asset ownership. For instance, child

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2018, 34:26–32

survival, nutrition and health are found to be notably

better if the mother has assets and income, than if the

father alone has the same [20,21]. Hence a move to

greater gender equality in access to productive assets

such as land can also enhance women’s effective control

over food distribution within the home, and benefit them

and their children as consumers.

Natural resources and food security

Apart from crops, women contribute to food systems

through forests and fisheries. This also helps enhance

the diversity and nutritional quality of diets, especially

but not only of poor families. An estimated one in

6 persons globally depends on forests, particularly for

supplementary food, including about 60 million indige-

nous people who are almost wholly forest dependent (see

[22] for a global collation of evidence on the importance of

forests for food). Forests also provide green manure,

fodder for animals, and various other inputs for small-

holder agriculture. Women and girls undertake much of

the gathering of forest products, especially food, firewood

and fodder [23]. Firewood remains the single most impor-

tant cooking fuel in large parts of the developing world

[24], and adequate cooking energy is an essential element

in food security. In the immediate short-term, increasing

women’s access to fuelwood by ensuring their access to

forests and village commons in sustainable ways, can

notably reduce energy poverty [23], although over time

a shift to cleaner fuels is necessary, given the seriously

health-damaging effects of unprocessed biofuels which

disproportionately affect women and children [24].3 How-

ever, women’s say in the management and use of forests

remains greatly restricted by male-biased rules and social

norms [23].

Similarly, seafood contributes substantially to nutrition. A

billion people are estimated to depend on seafood as their

primary source of protein, and 25 per cent of the world’s

total animal protein comes from fisheries [25]. Although

women constitute 46 per cent of workers in small-scale

fisheries and 54 per cent in inland fisheries [26], marine

products are harvested mainly by men, with women

constituting only 12 per cent of all fishers and fish farmers

globally ([27]: 108; see also, [28]). It is aquaculture,

however, which is fast-growing and expected to contrib-

ute more than half of all fish consumed by 2020 ([29]:19).

The expansion of inland aquaculture — an important part

of which falls in women’s domain — could provide a more

sustainable form of fish production than open sea fishing,

and can even help to conserve depleting marine resources

[30]. Ironically this receives no mention in SDG 14, just as

women’s stake in forests receives no mention in SDG 15.

www.sciencedirect.com

Gender equality, food security and the sustainable development goals Agarwal 29

Overall, therefore, while women are central actors in food

provisioning, and their involvement will increase with

time, they are stymied by serious resource and social

constraints.

The potential and limitations of SDG 5 Potential

To what extent does SDG 5 address these constraints?

The two key targets relevant to this discussion, 5.a and

5.5, are given in Box 1. To begin with, we note that SDG

5 pays serious attention to women’s access to land. This

offers a substantial opportunity, unlike the narrowly-

defined Millennium Development Goals which took

little account of women’s access to resources. In principle,

women can obtain land via three main sources: the family

(especially through inheritance or gift), the market, and

the State. Target 5.a privileges the family as the primary

source, since it explicitly mentions only inheritance laws

and not State policies. This limits its scope. But since

farm land is largely owned privately in most developing

countries (in India 86 per cent of arable land is in private

hands), gender equality in the ownership of family land

could provide security of tenure to large numbers of

women farmers. This would be an important step towards

increasing farm productivity and hence food security, by

providing foodcrops for direct consumption and/or

income for buying food. Also it could indirectly improve

food security for children, given the noted link between

the mother’s assets and child survival, nutrition and

health.

Second, Target 5.a mentions women’s access to financial

services. Affordable credit would help women farmers

invest in necessary inputs. There are, in fact, notable

examples of government efforts at linking women farmers

to subsidised formal credit, such as the National Bank for

Agriculture and Rural Development in India which pro-

vides such links to those forming Joint Liability Groups.

In some states, such as Kerala, many thousand women

farming collectively have taken advantage of this scheme,

which (among other measures) has facilitated substantial

improvements in their productivity and profits [31,32].

Box 1 SDG 5: some key targets

Goal 5: Achieve gender equality, and empower women and girls

everywhere

Target 5.a

Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic

resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and

other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural

resources, in accordance with national laws

Target 5.5

Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportu-

nities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political,

economic and public life

www.sciencedirect.com

Third, Target 5.a emphasises the need to increase

women’s access to natural resources. Although it does

not specifically mention forests, fisheries, or irrigation

water, it provides an important opportunity to focus on

these sources of food, if policy makers and practitioners

interpret it in those terms.

Fourth, Target 5.5 emphasises women’s equal and effec-

tive partnership in public life. Although the focus here is

on State institutions such as legislatures and village

councils, it could be extended to cover community insti-

tutions such as forest management groups and water

users’ associations which are found to be particularly

effective in natural resource management [23,33]. Hence,

as with Target 5.a, Target 5.5 can prove to be an ally in

enhancing food security if countries are willing to broaden

its interpretation.

Limitations

Notwithstanding its potential, however, SDG 5 also has

serious limitations in its ability to deliver on food security.

To begin with, consider access to farm land. The empha-

sis in Target 5.a, as noted, is mainly on access via inheri-

tance, and hence implicitly access via the family. But

even this access is diluted by the clause ‘in accordance

with national laws’, thus eliding precisely that which

often needs changing, namely making national laws gen-

der equal. Also, social norms and gender biases within

families and communities create serious barriers in the

implementation of women’s legal rights [3,7]. For exam-

ple, it is widely accepted in most communities that

women will join their husbands on marriage, rather than

the reverse. This social norm restricts women’s ability to

claim, control or manage the land they inherit from their

parents. Norms of female seclusion and gender segrega-

tion of public space similarly reduce women’s mobility

and public interactions, and hence their access to the

market place for procuring production inputs, hiring

labour during peak seasons, or selling their produce.

Social norms also restrict women’s access to training

and information on new technologies provided by gov-

ernments. Overcoming the many barriers created by

gendered social norms is likely to prove difficult, although

not insurmountable. But changing social norms is not

factored into SDG targets, and tends to fall largely outside

the purview of government policy. SDG 5, however,

makes no mention even of that which does fall within

the scope of policy, such as support for better implemen-

tation of inheritance laws by spreading legal awareness or

providing legal aid to women contesting their claims;

government land transfers to women under anti-poverty

programmes; and subsidised credit to help poor women

purchase land and farm it productively.

Moreover, for making the land productive, women need

irrigation and other inputs, as well as technical support for

conserving soil and water and moving towards sustainable

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2018, 34:26–32

30 Sustainability Science

4 Today there are many examples of civil society groups working to

increase women’s access to land. These include WGWLO (Working

Group for Women and Land Ownership) and MAKAAM (an all-India

forum for women farmers’ rights) in India, and ALRD (Association for

Land Reform and Development) in Bangladesh. Globally, the Interna-

tional Land Coalition is a case in point.

farming systems. Target 5.5, as noted, only mentions

financial services, which is just one facilitator, and cannot

cover the other needs on its own.

SDG 5 also fails to explicitly highlight women’s access to

forests and fisheries which, as noted, are important

sources of food. Although it does mention women’s access

to natural resources (Target 5.a), there is no elaboration

on what constitutes natural resources, or ways of accessing

them. In fact, the indicators for monitoring SDG 5 do not

include natural resources at all. Similarly, SDG 5 makes

no mention of the challenges faced by food producers due

to climate change, while SDG 13 which focuses on

climate change pays no attention to the needs of women

farmers.

Ways forward Notwithstanding its limitations, there are at least five

ways in which SDG 5 can help promote food security.

First, by interpreting this Goal as broadly and imagina-

tively as possible. Access to natural resources, for

instance, would need to include access particularly to

forests and fisheries. This will require broadening the

reach of Target 5.5 (which focuses on women’s effective

participation in institutional decision-making) beyond

legislatures and village councils (mentioned in the

SDG 5 indicators), to cover community institutions for

natural resource management. And although none of the

SDGs mention women’s access to a key agricultural

input — irrigation water — this can potentially be taken

up within the mandate of increasing women’s access to

natural resources.

Second, SDG 5 needs to team up with SDGs 1 and

2 which clearly recognise the link between gender

inequality and food security; in fact they do so more

explicitly on some counts than SDG 5 itself. SDG 1

(no poverty) and SDG 2 (zero hunger) are both concerned

with food security, the latter directly and the former

indirectly (poverty is often measured in terms of adequate

caloric intake). Both also recognise that gender inequality

has a bearing on the achievement of these Goals. For

instance, Target 1.4, in addition to focusing on security of

land tenure and credit mentions that by 2030 all men and

women should get appropriate technology; and Target

2.3 highlights the need to ‘double the agricultural pro-

ductivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women . . . ’ (emphasis added), and ensure

their access to ‘other productive resources and inputs,

knowledge, financial services, markets, and opportunities

for value addition and non-farm employment’. It also

recognises the need for promoting sustainable food pro-

duction systems and resilient agricultural practices.

Hence, implementing these SDGs in tandem with Target

5.a could go a long way towards increasing gender equality

in the resources women farmers need for improving their

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2018, 34:26–32

yields and profits, as well as for adopting practices that are

environmentally sustainable.

Third, SDGs which mention gender, but in a general way,

can be interpreted to focus on specific aspects. SDG 13 on

climate change, for instance, in its Target 13.b, mentions

the need for supporting women (among other groups) to

deal with climate change. This support could be directed

to women farmers in particular. Similarly, SDG 6 on water

and sanitation which mentions gender would have an

indirect impact on nutritional outcomes.

Fourth, it is essential to engender SDGs which have a

critical and direct bearing on food security, but which

ignore gender. Cases in point are SDG 15 as it relates to

forests and SDG 14 as it relates to marine resources.

Neither mentions gender equality of access. In fact, both

focus almost entirely on resource conservation, with little

recognition of their contributions to food chains or to the

incomes of rural households, especially the poor. Since

forests and marine resources are largely common pool

resources, access to them is mainly controlled by their

management committees which determine the rules of

protection and extraction. But the absence of a gender

focus in these Goals misses some key synergies between

gender equality, conservation and food security.

For instance, in India and Nepal, the likelihood of

improved forest conservation is found to be significantly

higher where forest management committees have a

critical mass of 25–33% women, than those which have

few or no women [23]. In the long run, this also increases

the supply of diverse forest products, and women’s access

to these products, thus contributing to food security in

direct and indirect ways. Similar outcomes could be

expected with women’s greater involvement in marine

resource management, beyond inland fisheries which are

already largely in women’s domain. In other words, estab-

lishing a synergy with SDG 5 would help SDGs 14 and

15 achieve their own targets more effectively as well.

Fifth, over the past two decades or more, there have

been many approaches used by civil society and even by

governments to increase women’s access to land and

natural resources, for enhancing their livelihoods and

food security.4 Some have been more successful than

others. Given that civil society representatives were

involved in the framing of the SDGs, seeking their

participation in achieving the Goals could provide

another source of potential synergy for governments

and international organisations. Such a partnership could

www.sciencedirect.com

Gender equality, food security and the sustainable development goals Agarwal 31

also focus attention on innovative approaches which

have received inadequate recognition so far, such as

cooperative forms of farming that could prove particu-

larly important for raising the productivity and food

security of women farmers and their families. Some

84 per cent of all farms across 111 countries cultivate

less than 2 hectares ([34]:12), many of them too small to

be viable. Here, group farming, especially by women,

could provide an important way forward. In Kerala

(India), for instance, there are some 62 000 women’s

group farms today, operating under the Kudumbashree

programme. In my recent study covering two districts I

found that these group farms substantially outperformed

male-managed individual family farms, in both per hect-

are annual value of output and profits per farm [32].

Elsewhere, community cooperation in crop planning

across similar agro-ecological regions in India has been

yielding positive results (see [35]).5

Overall, therefore, SDG 5 on gender equality has sub-

stantial potential for improving both household and

national food security, but much depends on how imagi-

natively and broadly governments interpret key ele-

ments, such as equality of access to land, to natural

resources such as forests, fisheries and irrigation water,

and to the control and management of these resources.

Even with this broader interpretation, however, the gen-

der equality goal may have limited impact, unless efforts

are made to establish synergies with other SDGs and draw

in civil society practitioners as partners in the implemen-

tation of key SDGs. This would include not only working

in tandem with SDGs 1, 2, 6 and 13 which highlight

gender as a concern, but also with SDGs 14 and 15 which

so far have failed to recognise their substantial potential in

furthering both gender equality and food security.

Acknowledgement This paper draws partially on the author’s background concept notes written for UN Women’s Research & Data Section 2018 Report: ‘Gender Equality in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’. I am grateful to Kanika Mahajan and the journal’s two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

References

1. Agarwal B: Food security, Productivity and Gender inequality. In The Oxford Handbook of Food, Politics, and Society. Edited by Herring R. New York: Oxford University Press; 2014.

2. Doss CR: If Women Hold Up Half the Sky, How Much of the World’s Food Do They Produce? Background paper. FAO Report on State of Food and Agriculture 2011. Rome; 2010.

3. Agarwal B: A Field Of One’s Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1994.

5 As an illustration of the potential of community initiatives for

achieving food security, also see Patel et al. [36] The authors provide

an interesting example from Malawi of local efforts to combat malnutri-

tion though agro-ecological practices, community mobilisation, and

women’s empowerment.

www.sciencedirect.com

4. Deere CD, Leon M: ‘The Gender Asset Gap: land in Latin America. World Dev 2003, 31:925-947.

5. Government of India: Agricultural Census 2010–11: All India Report on Number and Area of Operational Holdings, New Delhi, Agriculture Census Division, Ministry of Agriculture; 2010-11.

6. Doss C, Kovarik C, Peterman A, Quisumbing A, Bold M vandel: Gender Inequalities in Ownership and Control of Land in Africa: Myth and Reality. Agric Econ 2015, 46:403-434. This paper explores, conceptually and empirically, the levels and relative inequalities in landownership between women and men in African countries.

7. FAO: State of Food and Agriculture, Women in Agriculture: Closing the Gender Gap in Development. UN FAO; 2011.

8. Allendorf K: Do Women’s Land Rights Promote Empowerment and Child Health in Nepal? World Dev 2007, 35:1975-1988.

9. Swaminathan H, Suchitra JY, Lahoti R: Karnataka Household Asset Survey: Measuring the Gender Asset Gap. Indian Institute of Management; 2011.

10. Deere CD, Doss CR: The Gender Asset Gap: What Do We Know and Why Does It Matter? Feminist Econ 2006, 12:1-50.

11. World Bank: Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook, vols 1 and 2. World Bank; 2009.

12. IFPRI: Climate Change: Impact on Agriculture and Costs of Adaptation. International Food Policy Research Institute; 2009.

13. Bhattaria B, Beilin R, Ford R: Gender, Agrobiodiversity and Climate Change: A Study of Adaptation Practices in the Nepal Himalayas. World Dev 2015, 70:122-132.

14. Ruel MT, Quisumbing AR, Balagamwala M: Nutrition-sensitive Agriculture. What Have We Learned and Where Do We Go from Here? IFPRI Discussion Paper 01681, Washington DC; 2017.

15. Agarwal B: Rural Women, Poverty and Natural Resources: sustenance, Sustainability and Struggle for change. Econ Political Weekly 1989, 24:WS46-65.

16. Thakur R, Gautam RK: Nutritional Status Among Boys and Girls of a Central Indian Town (Sagar). Anthropol Rev 2015, 78:197-212.

17. Nuruddin R, Hadden WC: Are Pre-school Girls More Likely to be Under-nourished in Rural Thatta, Pakistan? A Cross-sectional Study. Int J Equity Health 2015, 14:151 https://doi.org/10.1186/ s12939-015-0287-3.

18. Global Nutrition Report: Nourishing the SDGs. http://www. globalnutritionreport.org/; 2017.

19. UN Women, Gender Equality in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Report, 2018, UN Women, New York.

20. Thomas D: Intra-household Resource Allocation: An Inferential Approach. J Hum Res 1990, 25:635-664.

21. Taukobong HFG, Kincaid MM, Levy JK, Bloom SS, Platt JL, Henry SK, Darmstadt GL: Does Addressing Gender Inequalities and Empowering Women and Girls Improve Health and Development Programme Outcomes? Health Policy Plan 2016, 31:1492-1514.

22. Vira B, Wildburger C, Mansourian C: (Eds.) Forests and Food: Addressing Hunger and Nutrition Across Sustainable Landscapes. Open Book Publishers; 2016. http://www. openbookpublishers.com/produc/399/forests-and-food– addressing-hunger-and-nutrition-across-sustainable- landscapes. This book brings together a vast body of evidence from across the world, on the potential of forests for reducing global hunger and malnutrition.

23. Agarwal B: Gender and Green Governance: The Political Economy of Women’s Presence Within and Beyond Community Forestry. Oxford University Press; 2010. This book examines the effect of women’s participation in community forestry groups in India and Nepal, on rules of forest use, conservation outcomes, and firewood shortages, based on primary surveys. It also examines the factors underlying women’s low presence in green governance and tests what proportions constitute a critical mass to make women’s presence effective.

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2018, 34:26–32

32 Sustainability Science

24. Modi V, McDade S, Lallement D, Saghir J: Energy services for the Millennium Development Goals. UNDP, World Bank, ESMAP; 2005.

25. Gutiérrez NL, Hilborn R, Defeo O: Leadership, Social Capital and Incentives Promote Successful Fisheries. Nature 2011, 470:386-389. This paper focuses on the key importance of seafood as a source of animal protein, the dangers of over-exploitation of fisheries, and the factors that could enable successful community-based co- management of fisheries for sustainable use. Examining 130 co- managed fisheries globally, the authors identify strong leadership as the most important attribute for success, followed by individual or community quotas, social cohesion and protected areas.

26. UNEP: Global Gender and Environment Outlook. United Nations Environment Programme; 2016 In: http://web.unep.org/gender/ sites/unep.org.gender/files/documents/Gender%20and% 20environment%20outlook_opt.pdf.

27. FAO: The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture. UN FAO; 2012. (chapter on gender) In: http://www.fao.org/docrep/016/i2727e/ i2727e.pdf.

28. World Bank: The Hidden Harvest: The Global Contribution of Capture Fisheries. World Bank; FAO and WorldFish; 2012.

29. World Bank: Aquaculture Review: Changing the Face of the Waters. The Promise and Challenge of Sustainable Aquaculture. Report 36622-GLB. World Bank; 2007.

30. Agarwal B: Environment Sustainability and Gender Equality: The Perils of Ignoring the Synergies. Environ Scientist 2017. September.

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2018, 34:26–32

31. Agarwal B: Can Group Farming Empower Rural Women? The Indian Experience, Discussion paper No. 20. UN Women, New York; 2017.

32. Agarwal B: Can Group Farms Outperform Individual Family Farms? Empirical Insights from India. World Dev 2018, 108:53- 67. This paper compares the productivity and profits of women’s group farms (which pool land, labour and capital) with male- managed individual family farms in two states of India – Telangana and Kerala. The former shows mixed results, but Kerala’s group farms strikingly outperform individual farms in both annual yields per hectare and profits per farm.

33. Craig L, Temsah G, Booker F, Day M, Samberg L, Prosnitz D, Agarwal B, Matthews E, Roe D, Russell D et al.: ‘Does the Gender Composition of Forest and Fishery Management Groups Affect Resource Governance and Conservation Outcomes: A Systematic Map’. Environ Evid 2016, 5 https://doi.org/10.1186/ s13750-016-0057-8.

34. FAO: The State of Food and Agriculture Report. Innovation in Family Farming. UN FAO; 2014.

35. Pradan: Revitalizing the Farm Economy Through Agricultural Production Clusters. Pradan; 2018.

36. Patel R, Kerr RB, Shumba L, Dakishoni L: Cook, Eat, Man, Woman: Understanding the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, Nutritionism, and its Alternatives from Malawi. J Peasant Stud 2015, 42:21-44.

www.sciencedirect.com