Feminization of food sovereignty: Analysis of a GIAHS case

This study explores the perceptions, experiences and ancestral knowledge of women seed keepers in Chiloé in the exercise of their food sovereignty, as well as the strategies they use to defend it. The interest of this study lies both in the need to vindicate the primordial role played by women farmers in the fight against hunger in the world included in SDG 2 of the 2030 Agenda; and to alleviate the scarcity of existing research on the fundamental work of the women seed keepers of Chiloé in the realization of food sovereignty, who have been chosen as a paradigmatic example for this research. Likewise, the relevance of this research lies in the fact that both Chiloé and several regions of Spain have been declared as GIAHS by FAO, aspiring that the results of this study contribute to the strengthening of the work carried out in this sense in these territories.By applying a qualitative methodology through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation with women seed keepers living in various communes of the Chiloé archipelago, results were obtained that showed a feminization of the exercise of food sovereignty under stress both by socio-ecological challenges and by multiple structural oppressions of fundamentally capitalist, colonial and patriarchal roots; but which is nevertheless defended thanks to the agency of these women. It is concluded that the greater the feminization of agriculture, the greater the possibilities of feminization of rural poverty, thus intensifying the strategies of feminization of both the exercise and the defense of food sovereignty by Chiloé peasant women; in addition to the necessary joint approach of gender, hunger and environment in the SDGs and in development policies for the search for comprehensive solutions.