Taking food out the private sphere? Addressing gender relations in urban food policy

ABSTRACT

Urban food policies are increasingly considered central instruments for the promotion of food systems sustainability. As for their social sustainability, justice and equity are expected to play a central role, but gender equity remains not fully developed. In order to explore how gender relations can be addressed in the context of urban food policies in global North settings, in this paper we analyze the drafting process of the Urban Food Strategy of Zaragoza (Spain), self-identified as agroecology-oriented and which aimed at introducing a gender-sensitive approach. Based on empirical insights from this case study, we show that a lack of reflection and empirical development exists on the food policy-gender equity nexus, while at the same time there is an emergent body of specific proposals to be obtained from feminist and agroecological reflections on urban lifestyles. Indeed, our paper shows that agroecological and feminist approaches converge in claiming for the visibilization of food-related care work, and in its de-privatization through community-based infrastructures. The paper also unveils limiting conditions which may hinder the transformative potential of agroecology and feminism in urban food policy co-production processes, such as top-down approaches to food policy production, weak participatory processes, and gender-blind decisions among city officers.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban food policy
• local food strategies
• gender equity
• agroecology
• feminism
• Spain

Introduction

Cities are increasingly becoming innovation spaces for the promotion of sustainable, healthy and just agri-food systems (Blay-Pamer et al. 2018; Moragues-Faus and Morgan 2015). In this scenario, urban food policies are achieving significant development, especially since the Milan Pact on Urban Food Policies was launched in 2015. Since then, it has been signed by more than 250 cities, bringing together the most advanced and ambitious programs of urban food policies (Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition 2018), thus becoming a powerful political tool to foster local, sustainable food policies around the world. The Milan Pact is an action framework for the comprehensive development of urban food policies for sustainability (BCFN 2018; Valley and Wittman 2018) structured in 6 thematic blocks: governance, sustainable diets and nutrition, social and economic equity, food production, food supply and distribution, and food waste. For each of these blocks, a set of actions is suggested which are to be implemented by the signatory city through its own Local Food Strategy (Milan Urban Food Policy Pact 2015). Taken together, the actions aim at developing sustainable food systems linking cities with their rural hinterland within a city-region food systems (CRFS) approach (Blay-Pamer et al. 2018). As large centers of consumption, cities provide an important opportunity to support CRFS transitions to sustainability beyond their administrative boundaries, as an act of co-responsibility with the territory on which they depend (Calori and Magarini 2015; DeCunto et al. 2017; López-García, Alonso, and Herrera 2018, 2020).

Equity has received special attention in urban food policies in the global North, in terms of equitable access of low-income groups to adequate food, especially through processes of public food procurement and urban agriculture (MUFPP 2015; Moragues; Morgan 2015; Valley and Wittman 2018; López-García, Alonso, and Herrera 2018; Mui et al. 2021). However, some authors have found difficulties in incorporating disadvantaged social groups in the development of urban food policies (Simón-Rojo 2019; Tornaghi and Dehaene 2019). In fact, the generalized call for food equity in urban policies has not been followed by the development of specific tools -other than public procurement-, nor empirical research, which is a major gap in the development of food policies knowledge. As for gender equity, it has received even fewer attention in the praxis of urban food policies (López-García et al. 2019; Tornaghi and Dehaene 2019), despite it has been identified as one of the main elements for agri-food systems sustainability (García-Sempere et al. 2019). This is indeed the case for the Spanish context, in which the underdevelopment of a gender approach in urban food policies has been stressed as a major gap to be addressed (López-García, Alonso, and Herrera 2018).

The unequal distribution of care-oriented food work has been highlighted as one of the main challenges of sustainable food systems transitions (Carney 2011; Federici 2012), especially from agroecological perspectives (Anderson et al. 2019; Bezner Kerr et al. 2019). As a reference framework for the development of sustainable urban food policies both in global North and South contexts (Blay-Pamer et al. 2018; Vaarst et al. 2017), agroecology has gained significant visibility in Spain through the Spanish Network of Cities for Agroecology (https://www.ciudadesagroecologicas.eu/) and several urban food strategies (López-García, Alonso, and Herrera 2018; López-García and González de Molina 2020). Agroecological research places the relationship between sexual division of care work and poor nutrition at the heart of the diet shift toward unhealthy patterns based on processed foods from long distribution chains (Álvarez-Vispo 2018). Bezner Kerr et al. (2019) stress the (often invisible) role of women in self-sufficiency agriculture in the global South. Also, food poverty in urban settings in the global North has been related to gender, in a pattern of intersectionality that is intertwined with race and which generates significant physical and psychological disorders in women (Carney 2011). Indeed, the improvement of gender relations in the food system has been addressed by feminist food studies as a new emergent field (see Avakian and Haber 2006) which according to Allen and Sachs (2007) should address the connections between three dimensions of the gender-food relationship: (i) the material (women’s food work in the labor market), (ii) the socio-cultural (women’s responsibility for food-related work in their homes), and (iii) the corporal (women’s relationship with eating). As common contradictions, the authors highlight how women hold little decision-making power while performing the majority of food-related work, and how they are often poorly nourished while bearing the responsibility for nourishing others.

Feminist approaches to food systems sustainability stress the importance of multi-actor, participatory and deliberative processes and methodologies, able to address the specificity of gender inequality and other discrimination axes such as race or income (Anderson et al. 2019; Maisano 2019; Tornaghi and Dehaene 2019). In parallel, the development of bottom-up processes and tools get centrality in local food policies to create ‘spaces of deliberation’ beyond the state (Moragues-Faus and Morgan 2015; Morgan 2015; Tornaghi and Dehaene 2019). Indeed, the construction of bottom-up, multi-actor and multi-level processes has been pointed out as a key success factor and innovation lever in urban food policies, together with cooperation with research bodies (DeCunto et al. 2017; Moragues-Faus and Sonnino 2018). In addition, strong and appropriate Participatory Action-Research processes in planning phases have been identified as key factors for successful plans and executions, particularly contributing to address inequities in marginalized and/or vulnerable social groups’ access to food policies co-production (Clark et al. 2017; Mui et al. 2021). Thus, multi-actor co-production processes and participatory methodologies are also crucial to deploy the full potential of urban food policies for equity and sustainability, including gender equity.

In this paper we explore how gender equity has been addressed in the context of a global North urban food policy case-study: the co-production process of the Zaragoza (Spain) food strategy. The Zaragoza Sustainable and Healthy Food Strategy is an official document which explicitly includes within its objectives the promotion of “sustainable production with an agroecological approach,” as well as the inclusion of a “gender approach” within food policies (Ayuntamiento de Zaragoza 2019, 14–15). In our analysis of its drafting process, we firstly aim at providing insights for the introduction of gender-sensitive approaches in food policy, as a field with poor empirical background. We frame our contribution in the increasingly highlighted potential synergies between agroecological and feminist approaches in food systems sustainability analysis (Anderson et al. 2019; Khadse 2017; Maisano 2019; Zuluaga Sánchez, Catacora-Vargas, and Siliprandi 2018). Thus, our second aim is to address such convergence in the specific context of urban food policy development. We argue that this specific convergence is key in shaping transformative approaches to food policies, particularly to change gender relations in food systems and deepen environmental and social sustainability through community strategies.

Agroecology, feminism, and the notion of sustainable and equitable food systems

Agroecology is a conceptual framework for socioeconomic innovations in the agri-food field, and provides a multidimensional and complex approach to the sustainability of the agri-food sector (Calle, Gallar, and Candón 2013; Gliessman 2016). The strong sustainability perspective advocated by agroecology combines the interrelated environmental and social (including economic, political and cultural) dimensions of food systems, thus providing multifunctional benefits (Laughton 2017). However, the environmental dimension of alternative food initiatives has been far more addressed than their social dimension in agroecological research (Gómez, Ríos-Osorio, and Eschenhagen 2012). In fact, sustainability without explicit attention to social justice has been criticized when discussing alternative food initiatives (Agyeman and Evans 2004; Connelly, Markey, and Roseland 2011). Furthermore, the literature addressing the social sustainability of alternative food initiatives usually focuses on labor conditions and the paradox of providing good food but not so good jobs (Biewener 2016; Galt 2013).

Food systems are a source of female subordination (Allen and Sachs 2007). The claim for equal power relations within the agri-food system implies addressing inequality in the analysis of food systems sustainability. Thus, gender should be an important dimension for what Tornaghi and Dehaene (2019) refer to as agroecology-informed food systems transformation processes. Sexual division of work currently characterizes food-related work in most societies (Benería 1979; Federici 2012), in which women continue to carry the responsibility for mental and manual labor of food provision, “the most basic labor of care” (Allen and Sachs 2007, 1). Such care-oriented food work (Lewis 2015) has long been a central part of women’s unpaid household labor (Neuman, Gottzén, and Fjellström 2015). Thus, as for social sustainability, gender equality raises concerns about the integrity of the agroecological model (Bhonagiri 2015). Agroecology has been also extensively referred to as an approach offering greater possibilities to change gender relations in agri-food systems (Anderson et al. 2019; Khadse 2017; Maisano 2019).

In turn, feminism has been vindicated as an essential approach to agroecology (among others, Maisano 2019; Zuluaga Sánchez, Catacora-Vargas, and Siliprandi 2018). The main contribution of feminist approaches to the analysis of socioeconomic reality has been widening the scope of what is understood as economy. From the outset, feminist economic analysis has provided support and raw materials for the emerging vision of a diverse economic field (Federici 2012; Gibson-Graham 2006; Pérez Orozco 2014). While mainstream economic thinking identifies economy with the visible, productive and paid work, feminist economics highlights the importance of the invisible and reproductive work.¹ It claims the latter fundamental role in guaranteeing social, but also economic reproduction, thus providing the material conditions for the existence of productive work (Carrasco 2011; Dalla Costa and James 1972; Ezquerra 2014; Mies 1986; Picchio 1992). Feminist analysis of the social and environmental unsustainability of the current economic system highlights the idea of false autonomy. This concept stresses that our current socio-economic organization ignores the biophysical limits of the planet and undervalues time and work not involved in (monetized) productive activities. Against this false individual autonomy, feminism vindicates the ecodependence of our societies on nature and the interdependence on other peoples’ caring during our whole life cycle. It is through the concepts of ecodependence and interdependence that the feminist conception of human sustainability (Carrasco 2009) meets agroecology’s strong sustainability view, in the combination of the environmental and social dimensions of economic activities (Anderson et al. 2019).

The convergence between agroecology and feminism is being increasingly explored empirically, as well as from a more theoretical and academic work (see Bosch, Carrasco, and Grau 2005; Cardoso et al. 2019; Herrero 2013; Khadse 2017; Lopes Ferreira 2016; Maisano 2019; McMahon 2011; Nobre, Faria, and Moreno 2015; Zuluaga Sánchez, Catacora-Vargas, and Siliprandi 2018). Amongst the issues analyzed within this dialogue, special attention is paid to the visibilization and valorization of reproductive and non-monetary work -often confined to the domestic space- in order to understand women’s role in food systems (Bezner Kerr et al. 2019). Another analytical focus is finding in the subordinate role of women in the family and peasant societies relevant keys to understand the specific political and collective action activities that women develop within the agroecological movement (Siliprandi 2010). Indeed, political participation of women in the agroecological movement represents a major contribution to the dialogue between agroecology and feminisms, especially from Brazilian female authors.² Bezner Kerr et al. (2019) emphasize the importance of the feminist approach in the construction of social contexts fostering agroecological food networks, and the synergistic potential of both approaches. In this context, the specific difficulties of rural women within often idealized peasant movements and communities must be brought into light and addressed, in order to overcome unequal gender relations contained in such models (Siliprandi 2010).

Regarding the participation of women in agroecological transition processes, a methodological approach and design deliberately oriented toward capturing gender relations is needed to ensure such participation, as well as adequate accompaniment for women empowerment and self-organization (Anderson et al. 2019). Interpersonal relations should have a greater weight in gender-sensitive analysis of care-related food work and food behavior in the domestic sphere and everyday-life (Maisano 2019). Khadse (2017) stresses the importance of non-mixed spaces in order to facilitate women’s involvement in agroecological processes and movements, an idea that is made extensive by other authors to the work with women collectives (Siliprandi 2010). However, a risk exists that gender mainstreaming in agroecology-related food policies is reduced to an “add women and stir” approach which might dilute the transformative potential of a true equity perspective (Álvarez-Vispo 2018; Zuluaga Sánchez, Catacora-Vargas, and Siliprandi 2018). As has been noted, the presence of even a ‘critical mass’ of women in policymaking positions is not a sufficient condition to ensure the making and implementation of feminist policies (Hawkesworth 1994). A feminist social justice agenda must go beyond such limited approaches to gender mainstreaming, and combine feminist politics of recognition with feminist politics of redistribution (Fraser 2009) to bring about transformative change.³

The rebalancing of gender relations in food systems is subordinated to transformations on scales transcending the household unit, effectively impacting the socio-political structures that determine the sexual division of care work (Álvarez-Vispo 2018; Bezner Kerr et al. 2019). Indeed, agroecology and feminism get reciprocally strengthened in those practical proposals which pose a greater emphasis on social transformations. For example, what has been called a ‘transformative agroecology,’ based on political articulations of grassroots organizations and alternative food networks, both rural and urban (Anderson et al. 2019; Levidow, Pimbert, and Vanloqueren 2014; Mier y Terán et al. 2018; Tornaghi and Dehaene 2019). Or, as mentioned, feminist proposals to reconfigure the conception of economic processes placing reproductive work at its center, within an ecodependence and interdependence-based framework. But how do agroecology and feminism converge in the context of local food policies? In order to achieve meaningful and transformative changes within a social justice agenda, policies endorsing agroecological practices must take a gender equity perspective if they intend to replace dominant paradigms (Bhonagiri 2015). In the next section we analyze the case of a pioneering experience in Spain.

The drafting of the Zaragoza food strategy

Zaragoza is the capital of Aragón, a large and very depopulated province of Spain (Pinilla, Ayuda, and Sáez 2008). The city’s municipal area has more than 9000 ha of irrigated agriculture originally developed during the Roman domination (Minguijón Pablo 2011), which are currently mainly used to grow fodder, with smaller areas of open-air horticultural crops. The City Council is a pioneer in Spain in the promotion of school and community gardens with an agroecological focus since 1983, with a significant subsequent development. In 2012 different social groups constituted the Platform for the Zaragoza Orchard with the aim of recovering and revitalizing the historical agricultural land in the irrigated meadows of the Ebro river valley. This platform supported the implementation of the “Huertas Life km 0” project (2013–2016), which was promoted by the City Council and aimed to supply the city with locally produced organic and fresh products.⁴ The project included actions fostering the installation of young farmers in organic farming, access to land, the recovery of local , sustainable public procurement, and the development of alternative landraces food networks. In 2015 Zaragoza signed the Milan Pact on Urban Food Policies and adopted it as the strategic framework of action toward the sustainability of its local food system (López-García, Alonso, and Herrera 2018). The City Council currently holds the presidency of the Spanish Network of Cities for Agroecology.

Following this trajectory, in 2018 the City Council promoted the development of a Sustainable and Healthy Food Strategy (henceforth Strategy) with the aim of coordinating and reinforcing the many food system related actions that were already underway in the city (Ayuntamiento de Zaragoza 2019). The deliberative process for the Strategy drafting followed a public policy co-production approach between the local administration and local social organizations’ representatives. The process was designed and implemented by an external technical team which conducted all interviews and workshops, processed all data gathered, and led the drafting of the Strategy. The Strategy development process took place between June and November 2018 involving the public discussion of four consecutive drafts. A total of 61 individual people and representatives from 45 local organizations and administration bodies participated in this deliberative process. The final version (fourth draft) of the Strategy was structured around the six areas of action of the Milan Pact, and it was approved in a plenary session of the City Council in May 2019. The inclusion of the gender approach was suggested by local participants in the drafting process, and further developed by the technical team as a pilot project, as the lack of such approach had been previously identified as one of the main gaps in the development of local food planning in Spain (López-García, Alonso, and Herrera 2018). An advisory team of three specialists on feminist economics and feminist policies was created, in order to introduce feminist perspectives in the drafting process, in both its methodological and content dimensions.⁵

All methodological decisions and products of the process were supervised by city officers, both from the Environment Agency and Gender Equity Department, and had the final word on the text and the actions to be included, shaping the drafting process with a strong top-down approach. The design of the process aimed at generating a non-gender-blind methodology, based on gender-disaggregated data, non-mixed gender deliberative spaces, sensitivity toward private relations among groups and people, and considering reproductive and care work when scheduling the meetings. It was initially organized as follows:

(1) Analysis of secondary sources to elaborate an initial diagnosis of the Zaragoza food system, including agricultural, health, consumption and environmental local data. Statistical sources and reports were sought that would break down data by gender. Given the scarcity of gender-disaggregated data for the local context, related studies were also consulted for other territories or territorial scales (among others, Escurriol, Binimelis, and Rivera-Ferre 2012; Lladosa Hernández 2017).

(2) General interviews with key informants for the initial diagnosis (see Table 1). The interview script included gender issues regarding (i) women’s participation and role in the food system, (ii) inequalities in domestic work distribution, and (iii) municipal action for gender sensitive, equitable access to adequate food. These key informants were suggested by civil servants from Zaragoza’s Environment Agency and their food policies’ advisors, and most of them were men, despite the latter being all women and us having asked explicitly for women key informants.

Table 1. Profiles of the general and specific interviewees. (W = women)

Profile	Number of interviews		Code
	General	Gender specific (all women)
Farmers	3 (1 W)	2	P
Environmentalist	1	1	E
Social and Solidarity Economy	-	1	S
Organic consumption groups	2	1	GC
Feminist movement	-	2	F
Care workers	-	1	TH
Parents’ associations	-	1	CE
Public administration	4	-	A
Small food retailers	2	-	PC
Health	1	-	SS

(3) Specific interviews with women who were taking part in local food or feminist movements (see Table 1), in order to gather specialized approaches to gender issues in the local food system. They participated in the process as individuals, not on behalf of their collectives. The script for this round of interviews included 18 questions grouped into three sections: (i) relationship between gender and care-oriented food work; (ii) participation of women in public spaces related to food; and (iii) convergences between sustainable and healthy food policies and feminisms.

(4) A deliberative workshop to develop a specific gender action area for the Strategy, as supplementary to the six areas of action included in the MP.⁶

The information obtained from the analysis of secondary sources, the general and gender-specific interviews, and the deliberative workshop provided the basis for a first set of gender-sensitive action proposals. These proposals were discussed and prioritized in an open event to discuss the first draft of the Strategy with representatives of 6 public administrations and 25 social organizations and economic actors (a total of 29 women and 24 men). The technical team encouraged all gender specific interviewees to attend the open event, and more specifically the deliberative workshop to develop a specific gender action area for the Strategy, but only 6 women related to feminist local groups attended the event and participated in the gender-specific deliberative workshop. As expressed above, contributions from the municipal department of Gender Equity and the local Environment Agency (in charge of the food policy and the Strategy’s drafting process) were included in the final draft to be approved by the City Council Plenary. Some of the gender-sensitive proposals included in the previous drafts were not included in the final draft (as explained below).

Gender-sensitive action proposals

The main gender-sensitive outcome of the drafting process was the identification of 62 action proposals addressing gender relations in the food system, which were reduced to 16 in the final version of the Strategy approved by the City Council (all listed in Appendix 1), out of a total number of 99 actions included. In this section we present an overview of the discourses and ideas gathered in the interviews and the deliberative workshop which delivered such suggestions. The richness and innovativeness of the discussions recorded can be contrasted with their translation within the final Strategy’s text. The section follows the six Milan Pact thematic action blocks, as they structure the action proposals’ section of the Strategy.

Food governance (action block 1)

Action proposals introduced in this block dealt with gender mainstreaming in food administration, gender equity in governance and deliberative processes, and the gender approach in the food policy evaluation and monitoring framework. They called upon addressing women’s life conditions on the timing of participatory and deliberative events and establishing non-mixed gender spaces, as demanded by feminist agroecology (Anderson et al. 2019).

Some interviewees (especially feminist groups, farmers and social organizations) raised concerns about food policies development in Zaragoza so far, highlighting the weaknesses of multi-actor approaches in the development and governance of initiatives such as farmers markets and public procurement. However, the final text did not include any action to improve the quality of the participation of women in the deliberative spaces for local food governance (mainly consisting of two consultative periodic meetings per year).

In relation to the participation of women in food-related political processes, the general perception was that it is larger in informal spaces, while formal decision-making spaces are usually assigned to men. Interviewees agreed on the central role of women in the development of agroecology-oriented local food networks, both as participants and as leaders. Indeed, the extent of women-led initiatives in the agri-food system, as well as their central role in alternative agri-food movements and institutions is a most relevant aspect of gender relations change in the agri-food system (Allen and Sachs 2007). The responsibility of ‘nourishing others’ (Allen and Sachs 2007) placed on women is a trigger for their participation in political food consumption initiatives. In our case, women particularly stressed their participation in agroecological consumption groups. This participation adds to women’s already overburdened workload in food procurement and preparation at home (Allen 1999).

The lack of women in institutional decision-making processes and spaces was also highlighted in the interviews. In this sense, making explicit “(mal)distribution, (mis)recognition, and (mis)representation” (Fraser 2009, 104) affecting equal participation is key to bring about transformative change. Additionally, interviewees pointed out that the feminist perspective has not been included so far in food governance processes, whether formal or informal. They referred to feminism both as the simple recognition of the role of women, and as a more complex approach to gender inequalities, oriented to re-balance power relations:

[A feminist perspective] has not been taken into account as a key issue [in local food policies] (…) It should always be considered, for example creating indicators to observe how many women speak and how much their opinions have informed final decisions (E)

Another relevant reflection identified is related to food governance risking reinforcing a ‘reactionary logics of care’ (Pérez Orozco 2014) by placing the responsibility for care-oriented food work again on women. Allen and Sachs (2007) have highlighted how food studies hold contrasting perspectives on whether women’s food work was empowering for women within the family or rather perpetuated their subordinate role. In this regard, interviewees were asked if the participation of women in local food networks derived in women empowerment or rather in the risk of perpetuating the role of care providers in relation to a healthy and sustainable diet (Bezner Kerr et al. 2019; Federici 2012; Zuluaga Sánchez, Catacora-Vargas, and Siliprandi 2018). Their responses agreed in interpreting this approach as a false dichotomy. They considered care work as essential, and rather than questioning the role of women as caregivers, they highlighted the lack of co-responsibility on the part of men. In this sense, they align with the two-dimensional conception of justice proposed by Fraser (1995, 2009) based both in recognition and redistribution (our emphasis). They highlight the visibilization and valuation of care work but emphasize the need for other social actors to take it on in order to overcome its feminization (ie. subordination dynamics):

It is weird to me that [the role of caregivers] appears to be negative, when it really is the logic that we accept, that in order to take [food-related care work] out of the private sphere we do not have to transform ourselves into something else, but make it visible and that others take those logics too (S)

Sustainable diets and nutrition (action block 2)

Gender-sensitive actions included in this block focused on food education, healthy food and diet awareness and dissemination, and the introduction of care-oriented food work in the local Care Policy Strategy.

Interviewees considered food as a central feature of both family and community life. Within the family context, the need to promote children’s involvement from very early ages was often highlighted. As for the community dimension, a main issue appointed was the contradiction between urban life styles -in terms of available time, information, money and space- and sustainable, healthy and just diets. In this regard, strengthening community links around food, especially reinforcing the social-economic life of peripheral neighborhoods, were pointed out as core issues. In this context, several interviewees mentioned the need of systemic thinking to transcend the subdivision of life spaces (domestic, production, political participation, leisure) and referred to care-work as something to be enjoyed and done collectively (Tornaghi and Dehaene 2019). More particularly, some interviewees suggested turning the kitchen and the mealtime, or the garden space, into community, recreational and celebration spaces, in which children would play a central role:

What we are doing [growing healthy vegetables and later bringing them home to be cooked, participating in Community Supported Agriculture groups, or purchasing at the farmers market] is already a pleasure, it is already pleasant from the beginning (…), and that is what must be understood (P3S2)

The best way to introduce children to the importance of food is by involving them throughout the process; in the purchase, in seeing where it comes from, in cleaning the vegetables, in cooking them, etc. (GC)

Women were presented in many interviews as the main responsible of food provision and management in the domestic sphere, and thus as fundamental agents of change toward sustainable, healthy and fair diets (Anderson et al. 2019; Bezner Kerr et al. 2019; García-Sempere et al. 2019). At the same time, as we have mentioned, several interviewees stressed the structural difficulty of following an adequate diet in a capitalist urban context. Supermarkets offer the possibility of quicker purchases, since a greater variety of products is found in one same place, but the large-scale distribution model is associated with unhealthy consumption patterns in multiple ways, both for people and for the planet (Álvarez-Vispo 2018; Tornaghi and Dehaene 2019). The tension between healthy, sustainable and fair food, and urban salaried and precarious life styles and rhythms appeared as a key factor:

It is very difficult not to go to the supermarket and look for other things, right? You have to be highly motivated (to alternative food networks), because things (advertising) take you there. And because of time, people don’t have time because they work a lot […]. Women have sensitivity but day-to-day emergencies do not allow it (GC)

The need to reconfigure time from a feminist perspective is frequently raised as a necessary element for the development of agroecological food practices (Álvarez-Vispo 2018; Carney 2011; Díaz-Méndez and García-Espejo 2017). The incorporation of women into the labor market means that they assume more productive work, while men do not assume the same volume of reproductive work. This implies that women occupy a double working day, outside and inside their homes, limiting their time and their options for personal development. This double day enters into competition with the time required to develop sustainable and healthy eating habits -traditionally women’s responsibility-, from buying food to cooking and caring for the family at mealtime (Álvarez-Vispo 2018; Díaz-Méndez and García-Espejo 2017). However, no measures were introduced in the final text addressing the proposals of the interviewees to take care-oriented food work out of the private sphere, mainly through the development of community infrastructures.

Social and economic equity (action block 3)

The most significant proposal in this block was to introduce a positive discrimination approach in municipal entrepreneurship programs related to food production, processing and marketing. This could strengthen a sustainability turn in the agricultural sector, as women are more likely oriented to sustainable farming (Escurriol, Binimelis, and Rivera-Ferre 2012; Khadse 2017). Also, it is expected that organic farming offers better employment opportunities for women than conventional farming (IFOAM-EU 2008; Maisano 2019).

Difficulties in economic access to agroecological products were raised in the interviews, bringing up two complementary approaches. On the one hand, the criticism of conventional foods low prices due to the externalization and invisibility of nature and labor exploitation costs. On the other hand, the need for affordable prices for local and organic products in order to increase their accessibility while paying a fair price to farmers:

Break down with the discourse that these products are very expensive -organic and fair-trade products-, and ask ourselves why the others are really very cheap (S)

I do agroecology but I want everyone to have access to quality food. If not, we are doing nothing. (P2)

Likewise, vulnerable social groups access to healthy -agroecological- food was mentioned as a fundamental issue, particularly in relation to the migrant population, following a joint intersectional approach to food (Bezner Kerr et al. 2019; Carney 2011; Tornaghi and Dehaene 2019). Actions proposed in this context focused in public procurement and the role of public and community infrastructures to address food poverty, such as food banks, soup kitchens and public food coupons to be spent in small food retailers, farmers’ markets and other short food supply chains:

It would be very interesting to have community-type strategies … that somehow redistribute the burden. Strategies at the community level, small, in neighbourhoods, few families, a school … (F3)

Collectively cooking, community and ecological soup kitchens initiatives. (…) Collectivize purchases, so that food does not fall solely on women, but rather something shared and collective; and from Social and Solidarity Economy projects (S)

However, no proposals related to economic access for low income social groups were included in the final text, nor did the references to community food infrastructures. As we will see in the following section, proposals for community food infrastructures are probably the greatest lack in the final text of the Strategy, as they represent a very innovative element regarding the reconfiguration of gender-sensitive food equity.

Food production (action block 4)

Only one action was introduced in this block in the final document: the valorization of the role of women in the food chain, with special regard to farming activities. Scientific literature stresses this valorization as a core action to increase gender equity in the food chain (Maisano 2018; Bezner Kerr et al. 2019; Zuluaga Sánchez, Catacora-Vargas, and Siliprandi 2018), as women have long been rendered irrelevant in their role as farmers (Allen and Sachs 2007).

Interviewed women highlighted the difficulties to participate in food chain areas associated with the masculine, particularly in farming. Indeed, men are fundamentally linked to food production and physical tasks (Bezner Kerr et al. 2019; Siliprandi 2010), while women tend to occupy organizational and administrative spaces (Anderson et al. 2019). Moreover, two interviewees indicated that women producers not only tend to be invisible but are often instrumentalized (i.e. holding the property title with the only purpose of making the farm eligible for public subsidies but with no involvement in day-to-day decision-making). As several women producers emphasized, they face a double discrimination as they occupy a space historically related to the masculine (Álvarez-Vispo 2018; Bezner Kerr et al. 2019):

I’ve always liked agriculture (…) I told my father many times: “if I had been born a boy I would surely be a farmer (P1)

In agriculture you [as a woman] have to overcome more difficulties (…) getting valorised when going from the domestic to the public sphere is a double effort (…) “What is this (girl) going to do?,” they [men] say (E1)

Interviewees suggested several actions to address gender inequalities in the farming sector and in rural settlements, which were however not included in the Strategy. Specifically, some interviewees stressed the potential of short food supply chains and rural-urban linkages to dignify and strengthen the position of women in rural communities (Bezner Kerr et al. 2019; Khadse 2017; Maisano 2018). Indeed, co-responsibility between the city and its rural environment hinterland is suggested to contribute to make rural women visible. Also, the urban-rural divide is highlighted as an important explanatory factor of the invisibility of food within feminism itself. Thus, bringing urban and rural feminisms closer was underlined as an important step in order to bring together feminism and agroecology. In this regard, interviewed local activists recognized that the feminist movement has not paid much attention to food-related issues:

I believe that the key lies in the co-responsibility [from the city] of the implications of our actions and our development model in rural areas. And to know the realities and what it means to live in the countryside for people who produce in that way [agroecological], which means that women are invisible. So are urban women: invisible. (GC)

The farmers do not participate in the [Alternative Food Networks] meetings in Zaragoza because the network is not oriented outwards. There is a need for education, awareness and, above all, [urban-rural] exchanges for there to be an approach to farmers and the countryside, in consumer groups, in open doors days. (P2)

Food supply and distribution (action block 5)

Regarding physical access to healthy food two actions were introduced in the Strategy aiming to diversify sale delivery points for local organic products. Interviewees pointed out that most agroecological purchasing options are concentrated in the city center, while peripheral neighborhoods have greater difficulty in accessing this kind of products:

Agroecological projects [of food networks] must not make life difficult: they must be easy and accessible. But I think that they must be accompanied by a change of conception and perception of what are the important things and what things can we do in the company of others [in community projects] (Gc1F1)

Collectivize purchases, so that food does not fall solely on women, but rather something shared and collective, adopting Social and Solidarity Economy approaches. Let them talk on the street, let them talk about projects, recuperate the street markets … (S)

Again, community strategies appear as a path toward agrifood transformation toward gender equity, but also toward territorial re-localization of the economic flows (Tornaghi and Dehaene 2019), reinforcing the feminist claim for interdependence and ecodependence acknowledgment. In this sense, interviewees mention again the need to escape city centralism and reconnect the city with its rural hinterland as an urgent measure. And also, to trigger collective reflection on urban life-style and consumption patterns, and their relation with gender equity and sustainability:

The same ignorance that exists [about the food system] in society in general is also present in the feminist collectives (…) [Within 8M⁷ movement] when all women have lunch together, there are millions of plastics (…) the part of consumption is something beyond how we are harmed in consumption as women, it is something that is pending not yet addressed [in the feminist movement]. (GC)

Gender mainstreaming in the Zaragoza local food strategy?

The introduction of several gender-sensitive action proposals in 5 out of 6 action areas of the Zaragoza Food Strategy (no actions were suggested for the food waste block) represents a pioneering experience in the way to setting gender equity in the agenda of urban food policy praxis. Zaragoza’s Local Food Strategy constitutes a very unusual case where food policies meet gender equity approaches in an official document with practical impacts on the local reality in the form of municipal regulations and food policy programs. The lack of background in urban food policy development with a gender approach makes this case valuable for its novelty, as it opens up the way for further developments on gender-sensitive urban food policy praxis. No previous cases were identified in the literature mentioning gender (nor feminist) approaches to food policies empirical development in Spain (López-García, Alonso, and Herrera 2018), nor in other countries around the world (Growing Food Connections 2021; Calori and Magarini 2015; DeCunto et al. 2017; Mui et al. 2021). Indeed, only after the experience of Zaragoza the València City Council began a review process of its Local Food Strategy from a gender equity perspective (see Herrero Garcés and Castellanos Ayala 2020).⁸

The most innovative gender-sensitive action proposals that emerged during the Strategy drafting process were mainly suggested by feminist food activists in the interviews and the non-mixed workshop contexts. The proposals were not a result of previous collective reflections on the food-gender nexus, but rather emerged during the interviews themselves. Even when most of the gender-specific interviewees were both food and feminist activists, they recognized that such nexus was not previously present in their political discussions. Proposals obtained in this way were innovative as they suggested (i) a conceptual reconfiguration of care-oriented food work, and (ii) a reconfiguration of roles and agency within the food chain through community-based collective approaches. Following a critical analysis of food-related work as an invisible activity, feminist food activists suggested specific proposals to overcome the double economic discrimination of women, both in productive and reproductive tasks. On the one hand, actions related to processes, facilities, and community networks to overcome individualism and work overload, allowing cooperation, time redistribution, and sharing of care-oriented food work (Federici 2009; Siliprandi 2010; Tornaghi and Dehaene 2019). The gathered proposals (i.e. community kitchens, Community Supported Agriculture, community and school gardens) addressed physical segregation of everyday spaces, and more especially the need to take food out of the private sphere, in order to develop community fabrics and infrastructures in the territories beyond the State and the markets (Moragues-Faus and Morgan 2015). On the other hand, actions related to the reconnection between countryside and the city, as a way to advance toward ecodependence and interdependence (Carrasco 2009). It is in the aim of de-privatizing and collectivizing care-oriented food work where feminist approaches to food policies meet transformative agroecology, reinforcing the community sphere of the economy as the pathway to social and ecologically sustainable food systems, placing life at the center of the economic activity (Pérez Orozco 2014).

The final text of the Strategy was however less ambitious than some reflections and proposals which emerged along its drafting process. The gender-sensitive actions included mainly focused on awareness raising on the unequal distribution of food-related workload, in promoting men involvement in care-oriented food work, and in positive discrimination measures to strengthen the position of women in the local food chain (see Appendix 1). The Strategy did not include actions targeting the impossible conciliation of productive and reproductive work in capitalist, post-industrial cities, nor the subordinated role of women in society and particularly in the food chain. Thus, while contributing to gender-mainstreaming in urban food policy, these actions have a limited impact for changing gender relations in the food system, as they do not address the redistribution of power and workload.

The drafting process provided some important insights to unveil power dynamics underlying the introduction or avoidance of transformative approaches (such as feminism and agroecology) in food policies. What were apparently technical decisions, adopted by women (for instance the technical chiefs at the municipal Environment Agency), introduced important biases in the final version of the Strategy text in three particular aspects. First, as for the low presence of women in the initial list of “general” interviewees, this was justified by technical chiefs claiming that the list was the most appropriate given the political framing of the Strategy drafting. Equal representation of men and women was not considered as a selection criteria, even if the politicians in charge agreed to introduce a gender-sensitive approach in the process. Secondly, the timing conditions for the participatory workshops (including the non-mixed workshop to discuss the gender approach) were clearly a disabling element for (nonprofessional) activists participation. In this case, city officers justified timing conditions claiming that workshops had to take place during their working hours. Finally, many of the feminist-oriented actions suggested were removed from the final text, especially those which tended to question and reconfigurate food-as-commodity cathegories and approaches. These three particular aspects show the neglection of the relevance for a ‘healthy and sustainable food strategy’ of some specific issues, such as community food infrastructures, feminist spatial planning (Tornaghi and Dehaene 2019), or non-mixed spaces for reflection on the social-ecological implications of food-related care work (Khadse 2017). Thus, the Strategy considers food-related care work as a private issue thus not an issue for public policy.

Furthermore, the removal decisions show lack of due consideration with the participants’ work and contributions, but also with the quality of the knowledge generated through participatory planning processes and its role to prevent inequity in food systems (Mui et al. 2021). Gender-blind decisions are presented as technical en neutral decisions, but in fact they reproduce an hegemonic ideological environment which actually hinders the strong ties between food systems unsustainability and gender inequity (Mies 1986; Zuluaga Sánchez, Catacora-Vargas, and Siliprandi 2018). The capitalist and patriarcal logics underlying food systems functioning develop complex and often subtle mechanisms to block out innovation oriented to power redistribution, and this performs both its (gender) social (in)equity and ecological (in)sustainability (González de Molina and López-García 2021; Mies 1986; Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen 1999; Neira and Soler 2013). In our case, these logics were reproduced both by men and women in charge of making the ‘technical’ decisions during the co-production process which led to the removal of feminist approaches from the Strategy.

There are other contextual reasons which could explain a weak gender-sensitive approach adoption. First, a recent change in the technical coordination of the Environment Agency can also explain the non introduction of innovative approaches to food policies, as the former coordinator was the responsible for the promotion of the pioneer policy agenda which Zaragoza deployed since the early 1980s. Second, despite the strong commitment of the politician in charge of the Environment Agency and of the food strategy development to both agroecology and feminism, her authority could not counteract the gender-blind decisions made by city servants, as her political position was weak within the City Council. Third, the general disaffection of local food activists with a drafting process which they considered non adequately participatory. And fourth, the incipient stage of the debate on the agroecology-feminism nexus among local activists probably explain why nobody strongly pushed to keep feminist proposals in the Strategy. Awareness among food and feminist activists on the important interrelations between both approaches is fundamental to promote a stronger convergence among them in the context of food policies development. Indeed, a stronger pressure from social organizations could have been decisive here.

As a result, following Fraser’s (1995, 2009) two-dimensional conception of justice the Strategy did not go beyond recognition of women care-oriented food work and their (subordinated and usually invisible) role within the food chain. Many of the removed actions were the most transformative among those suggested, regarding their redistributive potential, covering linkages between rural and urban women, the improvement of physical and economic access to local fresh food, and specially the development of the above-mentioned community infrastructures and facilities oriented to address territorial and gender inequalities related to food. As the final output of the Strategy drafting did not include such redistributive proposals, we can refer to an ‘add women and stir’ approach to gender equity.

Despite the fact that equity is at the heart of food policies and that women are mostly in charge of food, the introduction of the gender perspective in an urban food strategy is not obvious. The mere proposal of introducing this element in the drafting process generated uncertainty about how and which section of the local administration should lead this task. This is understandable, given the culture of competencies segregation between different departments of the same administration (2020; López-García et al. 2017). Additionally, the City Council played a rigid role in the drafting process, heavily framed in a top-down approach, affecting both the methodology and the contents to be introduced in the final text. Firstly, the process did not provide enough support for the participation of women. For instance, childcare provision was not considered in the planning of deliberative sessions. Secondly, the process offered limited spaces for horizontal dialogue between different actors. In this regard, the presence and involvement of social organizations and local actors in the deliberative workshops was low because they were held during working hours. As Hawkesworth (1994) has noted, there are situational determinants and organizational repertoires in the policy-making process which constrain viable options for gender mainstreaming. The rigidities in the methodological approach here described did not contribute to re-balance the disadvantaged position of women in public deliberative spaces, thus hindering the aim of gender-mainstreaming in food policy development.

Conclusions

The drafting of the Zaragoza food strategy generated innovative action proposals to address gender relations in the local food system which are a valuable contribution to the formulation of an equitable food policy, particularly around community-related approaches. Indeed, this collective dimension is an important convergence between feminist and agroecological approaches within equity-oriented urban food policies development. Collectivizing and de-privatizing food-related care work are necessary steps toward co-responsibility both in the household and the social spheres. On one hand, community infrastructures and initiatives such as community kitchens or Community Supported Agriculture schemes are means to remove food from the domestic, usually invisible and feminized sphere of social reproduction. On the other, community initiatives can also enhance food access by providing fresh local food to peripheral neighborhoods and low-income social groups. Furthermore, they can engage the community as a whole with food and with both the territory and the social fabric from which food is produced. Under such a socioeconomic re-territorialization approach, involving the community in a ‘beyond the state’ food governance approach (Moragues-Faus and Morgan 2015) is a way to improve local food systems ecological sustainability and social equity.

The identified action proposals to change gender relations in the local food system are a positive outcome of the co-production process here presented. However, actions responding to innovative redistributive approaches to gender equity were poorly reflected in the final document of the Strategy. Constraining elements framed in patriarchy and the rigidities of the policy-process itself did not allow the Strategy to include the richness of the proposals generated during the drafting process. Most particularly, proposals framed in a feminist reconfiguration of economic processes through the de-privatization and collectivization of food work were left out. This important omission is partly due to the weakness of the deliberative process carried out, as quality participatory processes are needed to overcome hidden mechanisms which keep the status quo in the food system (González de Molina and López-García 2021; Mui et al. 2021).

Such weakness builds upon conflicting approaches to the food strategy development between the City Council and the technical team. The former’s conventional top-down approach to food policy development has hindered the innovative potential of a co-production process in which the prominent contributions of feminist food activists have not been reflected in the final text. Furthermore, the disaffection to food policies co-production among local feminist and food activists on the one hand, and relatively emergent development of the political discussions on feminism-agroecology nexus and its practical implications regarding (local) food policies on the other might have hindered the potential of local activists to push for a stronger feminist approach in the Strategy. A stronger convergence between agroecology and feminism, both in theoretical and operational terms regarding local policies, would reinforce its performance in local food policy co-production. Additionally, further developments of gender-sensitive food policies co-production processes should place special attention on how to develop methodological arrangements to address women specificities to participate in such deliberative spaces, such as non-mixed groups, and hold a focus on interpersonal quotidian relations and networks of women around food.

Elements hindering healthy, just and sustainable diets and nutrition in global North cities lie deeply in structural interrelated processes beyond the food system, such as patriarchy, capitalism and consumption society. Indeed, the rebalancing of gender relations in food systems is subordinated to transformations on scales that transcend the home unit and everyday life, and needs impacting the socio-political structures that determine the sexual division of work. Hence, addressing the gap of gender-sensitive food policy praxis, even agroecology-oriented, lies on a wider project of food systems transformation, in which the cooperation and articulation of local social fabrics and the administration may enhance the possibility to develop and multiply social innovation related to food equity. Thus, food policies research finds an open field to develop a praxis beyond an ‘add women and stir’ approach, in which feminist food studies and political agroecology meet in order to address the inequalities lying in the complex background of urban food policies.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the City of Zaragoza for their commitment to sustainable and equitable urban food policies, and specially to the officers of the municipal Sustainability Agency Julia Mérida and Teresa Artigas. We would also like to thank Amaia Pérez Orozco and Mirene Begiristain for their invaluable support on applying a feminist approach to the initial design of the research, and discussing the intermediate results. Finally, we also want to acknowledge the comments of the anonymous reviewers for helping to improve the clarity and quality of the paper.

This article has benefited from a Juan de la Cierva (2016) post-doctoral grant from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, and from a grant from the Fund for the Third Sector from the Spanish Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge (2020 and 2021).

Notes

1. Reproductive work (or care work) refers to all activities or services provided to satisfy the basic needs of individuals along all their life cycle. It includes material and emotional attention, it has a strong relational component, and implies a constant management of times and spaces.

2. See Prévost (2019) for a thorough revision of these important contributions.

3. An important debate in social justice theory addresses whether it should focus on identity-related policies of recognition or on social goods-related redistribution policies. Fraser argues that an adequate approach and understanding of social justice most encompass both.

4. The project “Huertas Life km 0” was co-funded by EU LIFE+ programme (code LIFE12 ENV/ES/000919).

5. This advisory team met with the technical team three times at the beginning of the process design, and also provided feedback for results discussion. Its members did not participate in the deliberative process.

6. This specific section was not included in the final text of the Strategy.

7. March 8th, Feminist labor, care and consumption strike, the biggest action day of women and feminist groups in Spain.

8. València and Zaragoza City Councils are the main promoters of the Spanish ‘Cities for Agroecology’ Network. València started a gender-sensitive review of its Local Food Strategy in 2019.