Conferences and summits: InfoPoint conference: Cultivating change - Advancing gender equality in food systems

Bringing together knowledge and people for sustainable, fair and just food systems. Gender inequalities affect all aspects of food systems and undermine the overall wellbeing of all involved actors. This is limiting their food and nutrition security and their empowerment while also hindering the effectiveness of women, girls, men and boys’ contributions.

To achieve sustainable, fair and just food systems, it is essential to address these inequalities and to promote gender equality. The Infopoint conference focuses on managing the knowledge needed to analyse issues, to identify, design and implement solutions that help advancing gender equality in food systems.

Speakers will present their respective commitments, initiatives, experiences and points of view in relation to gender equality, food systems sustainability and research and innovation. The event aims to promote a better understanding of the importance of gender equality in food systems and explore ways to advance it. Participants are invited to share thoughts, questions, and perspectives on the topic. This input will help create tools that are more accessible, useful, and effective.

Event Details

Date: Wednesday 9 April 2025

Time: 11:00 - 12:30 (CEST)

Location: InfoPoint, Brussels, Belgium

Languages: English

Organisers: International Partnerships InfoPoint

Women play a vital role in every stage of food production and distribution - from farming to processing, trading, and consumption. Yet, gender inequalities persist along the entire food systems at the detriment of women. These inequalities are rooted in discriminatory social norms and rules that limit women’s empowerment, restrict their productive potential and limit their access to land, resources and assets.

Gender-equal food systems are key to ensure adequate nutrition and healthy diets for all, environmental integrity of agroecosystems, adaptation and mitigation of climate change, and decent livelihoods. Achieving gender equality is an integrative part of food systems transformation that needs to be addressed through comprehensive and holistic approaches addressing the root causes of gender inequalities.

Steering these dynamics to achieve the desired outcome is crucial. In this frame, the Gender Action Plan of the European Commission (GAPIII) adopts a transformative, intersectional, and rights-based approach to gender equality in external action. It focuses on addressing root causes of inequality and promoting systemic change and aims for 85% of new EU actions to contribute to gender equality.

The conference will address these issues by presenting the European Commission’s policy perspective on the topic, followed by examples of initiatives supporting gender equality and women’s empowerment by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Subsequently, the audience will get insights from the work of the Kenyan Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (PELUM), a network of Civil Society Organizations / NGOs working with...