The feminist dimensions of food sovereignty: insights from La Via Campesina’s politics

Abstract

Expanding and defending women’s rights and eradicating women’s oppression have become key to La Via Campesina and its conceptualization and practice of food sovereignty. In this paper, we analyze how gender equality and feminism have gained momentum within the movement, and how the work on gender issues configures a feminist politics and praxis at the global level. As LVC celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, we examine what difference women’s decades-long struggles have made within the movement, especially since 1996, and how these have shaped the movement’s politics, both organizationally and politically. We argue that women’s activism has contributed to radicalizing food sovereignty with a feminist perspective.