The barriers to women’s access to adequate food and nutrition were the focus of a presentation by Anne C. Bellows, Ph.D., Falk College professor of food studies, at the United Nation’s forum series: The Future of Global Food Policy this spring. Bellows’ presentation entitled, “Eating, Feeding, Being Fed: Gender, Nutrition and the Human Right to Adequate Food,” explored why the food and nutrition status of women and girls is not improving despite a global call for the inclusion of women and an international gender perspective.
“Institutionalized gender discrimination and structural violence impose barriers to women enjoying the right to adequate food and nutrition,” notes Bellows. “We need harmonization of legal, institutional, and policy mechanisms that could promote a gendered analysis of, and action on, the intersection of all of women’s rights over the lifetime and the right to adequate food.”
The FoodFirst Information Action Network (FIAN International), the Geneva Infant Feeding Association (GIFA, Swiss arm of the International Baby Food Action Network, IBFAN) and a coordinated group of researchers at Syracuse University and the University of Hohenheim (Stuttgart) continue to explore this issue and will soon release a book entitled Gender, Nutrition and the Human Right to Adequate Food (Routledge Taylor and Francis Group).
Dr. Bellows joined Syracuse University in January 2013. As University Professor since 2007 at Hohenheim University, Bellows was the tenured chair in the Department of Gender and Nutrition and deputy director of the Institute for Social Sciences in Agriculture in the Faculty of Agriculture. She was also the director of the Research Center for Gender and Nutrition, a think tank for the university.
With an extensive portfolio of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and presentations, her research interests include food and nutrition systems and economies; linkages between sustainable agriculture, development and livelihoods; human rights and the right to adequate food and nutrition, including food and nutrition security; civil society, social movements, and food sovereignty; community public health; urban-rural food linkages in terms of production for trade and household consumption, migration, nutritional health, biodiversity, food safety, food practices and praxis, cultural integrity and identity, social justice, gender, and children. She has been recognized for teaching and research excellence, receiving funding support for her work from diverse agencies and foundations.