Advancing Rights, Justice, and Action for Women in Food Systems 

Food systems are the backbone of community wellbeing—and women are the backbone of food systems. From seed selection to harvest, from processing and trading to feeding families, women hold up every link of the chain. Yet across the world, they continue to suffer from unequal access to land, finance, information, decision making power, and dignified work. These inequalities weaken not only the livelihoods of women themselves, but also the nutritional resilience of entire communities. 

The CAtalyzing Strengthened policy aCtion for heAlthy Diets and ResiliencE (CASCADE) programme, funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of The Netherlands and implemented by CARE and GAIN across Benin, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Uganda, was designed to confront this exact reality. CASCADE works at the intersection of gender equality, food systems transformation, and improved nutrition, using gender transformative, multisectoral, and community driven approaches to strengthen women’s rights and expand access to and consumption of healthy diets.

As the world marks International Women’s Day 2026, this moment calls for more than celebration. It calls for systemic change. It calls for advancing Rights, Justice, and Action in food systems so that women are not simply recognized for the roles they already play but are supported to influence the systems that shape their lives. When women’s rights and agency are at the centre, food systems become more equitable, resilient, and capable of nourishing present and future generations. 

Malnutrition and Gender Inequality 

When women lack control over income or time, household food allocation may be uneven. When they are excluded from agricultural extension services, productivity and dietary diversity suffer. When they are absent from policy discussion platforms, budgets and programmes fail to reflect lived realities. These examples show that malnutrition and gender inequality reinforce one another. Addressing malnutrition therefore requires transforming power relations in households, communities, markets, and institutions. 

This is how CASCADE works. Not simply delivering services but shifting paradigms to address a more profound food systems change. 

Rights: Recognising Women as Nutrition Rights Holders 

From a food systems perspective, recognising women as rights holders means acknowledging that nutrition is not charity. It is a fundamental human right linked to dignity, bodily autonomy, and wellbeing. Women are producers, traders, caregivers, and entrepreneurs. Yet their rights to nutritious food, health services, land, finance, and decision making remain constrained. 

Women are often treated as beneficiaries of programmes rather than as individuals entitled to claim rights and influence the systems around them. CASCADE challenges that framing. It works to make women’s rights tangible by strengthening access to healthy diets through private service providers, community nutrition services, and evidence informed policy processes. 

Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLA) and Farmer Field and Business Schools (FFBS) provide platforms for women to access credit, strengthen financial literacy, adopt climate resilient agricultural practices, and expand income generating activities. Across contexts, women use savings and loans to diversify crop production, invest in small enterprises, establish home gardens, and stabilize household consumption during economic and climate shocks. 

In Uganda, women smallholder farmers participating in FFBS have strengthened their access to improved practices and market systems, enhancing their resilience. In Benin, women engaged in nutrition-sensitive value chains such as orange fleshed sweet potato, legumes, and poultry have leveraged savings groups to fund micro businesses and home gardens that increase the local availability of nutrient rich foods. In Kenya, savings groups have provided income buffers during economic disruption, helping protect household food consumption.

The lesson is clear: When women can claim their rights to resources, services, and voice, we see better diets, healthier children, and more resilient households. Food systems only function effectively when they work for women first.

Justice: Changing the Rules of the System  

Participation alone does not guarantee equality. Inequality in food systems is structural, not accidental. Women face systemic barriers to land ownership, income, finance, leadership, and fair wages while carrying a disproportionate burden of unpaid caregiver work. Simply inviting women into an unfair system is insufficient if the rules remain unchanged. 

Justice means changing those rules and tackling structural barriers in households, communities, markets and institutions. It means transforming policies, budgets, and institutions so that resources and power are distributed equitable. Without justice, rights remain promises on paper.  

CASCADE advances justice through gender responsive policy engagement, budget advocacy, community feedback mechanisms, and institutional reform. The Community Score Card methodology provides structured processes for identifying service delivery gaps and surfacing inequalities that often remain invisible. By facilitating dialogue between communities and local authorities, these tools strengthen accountability and ensure women’s voices inform decisions.

In Benin, women’s organizations have advocated for stronger integration of nutrition into local development plans and improved tracking of nutrition budgets. In Nigeria, women’s groups and civil society actors have contributed to strengthening multisectoral nutrition governance processes. In Kenya, women have participated in county level nutrition forums and influenced food safety and nutrition planning initiatives. 

These dialogues engage women and men, religious leaders, and community actors to challenge harmful norms and promote shared responsibility. 

Justice also requires confronting the invisible foundation of food systems: unpaid care and domestic work. At the community level, Social Analysis and Action dialogues create safe spaces to reflect on food allocation, caregiving, and household making. Through these community dialogues, men and boys are engaged to share caregiving and household responsibilities. In Kenya and Ethiopia, community dialogues have contributed to visible shifts in shared labour and decision making. In Benin, engagement with religious and traditional leaders has strengthened community support for joint childcare and women’s roles in food production. In Nigeria, women engaged in empowerment groups increasingly report confidence in influencing household decisions.

Justice is therefore about fair distribution of voice, resources, and power. It is about ensuring that women can influence the policies and markets that shape their livelihoods and nutrition outcomes. 

Action: Turning Commitments into Lasting Change 

Rights must be respected, protected, and fulfilled. Fulfilling them requires active leadership, particularly from governments as primary duty bearers. Laws governing land and property ownership, access to finance, business registration, employment protections, and mobility must be reformed where they disadvantage women. These are the formal rules that shape opportunity. 

But action also requires shifting informal rules. Governments must lead by example by ensuring equal pay for equal work, protecting women in workplaces, creating opportunities for women to lead and legislate, and addressing discriminatory practices related to pregnancy and employment. They set the tone for markets and households alike. 

CASCADE connects policy and people. While policies may be written by a few individuals, their implementation depends on thousands of actors across communities, markets, and institutions. By linking grassroots advocacy, community accountability, and national level policy engagement, CASCADE ensures that commitments translate into real change for women. 

In practice, this includes promoting female entrepreneurship in small and medium enterprises supplying nutritious foods, supporting young women working in farms, factories, and markets through improved food environments and facilities, and ensuring that food policies do not disadvantage women producers and entrepreneurs. It also means strengthening inclusive value chains and engagement in safe and protective food systems so women traders and vendors can thrive in safer markets. 

In Ethiopia, CASCADE supported regional and woreda level nutrition planning and financing processes targeting women of reproductive age and children, linking gender relevant nutrition priorities to public financing decisions. In Mozambique, CASCADE supported government-led nutrition service delivery systems, expanding intervention packages for women of reproductive age and young children to additional communities, strengthening the reach of formal nutrition services. 

Engaging men and boys is central to this process. Power is not a zero-sum game. Moving from power over to power with expands collective potential. When men see gender equality as beneficial rather than threatening, transformation accelerates. 

Women Leading Sustained Change 

Across countries, women are not passive recipients of support. They are decision makers and solution builders. They are shaping food environments, improving food quality, and expanding access to healthy food products. When women lead saving groups, cooperatives, businesses, and community structures, improvements in income, diet quality, and resilience are more sustainable.  

Sustainable transformation must be locally owned and women driven. Investments in women’s leadership, advocacy, and enterprise are therefore not peripheral activities. They are central strategies for achieving equitable food systems and improved nutrition. 

From Intent to Implementation 

This International Women’s Day is a call to move from intent to policy, and from policy to implementation. Governments, markets, civil society, and development partners must uphold women’s rights in food systems, advance gender justice in policies and institutions, and invest in sustained, women led action. 

When women have secure rights to land, access to finance and services, equal voice in decision making, and shared responsibility in care work, food systems become healthier and more resilient. 

This International Women’s Day, let us back women with the power, resources, and justice they deserve. Because when women lead, food systems work for everyone. 

Authored by:

• Boniface Musembi, CASCADE Communications Manager
• Caroline Atim, GAIN Gender Advisor Africa
• Queen Katembu, CARE Senior Technical Advisor, Gender