The Women and Gender Diversities Working Group of the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM) launched We Exist: A Toolkit for Gender Equality and the Right to Food, a new advocacy and popular education resource designed to strengthen the work of social movements, civil society and Indigenous Peoples’ organizations advancing food sovereignty and gender justice in their territories.
The toolkit comes at a moment when women’s and gender diverse people’s rights are under attack, and global industrial food systems become increasingly unstable. The launch event brought together women’s collectives and gender-diverse communities on the frontlines of climate crisis, displacement, conflict, rural inequality, and structural exclusion, showing that they remain at the forefront of the struggle for food and gender justice.
In Gujarat, western India, fisher women sustain the local economy, they carry out most of the work, but they are neither recognized nor granted fishing and fish-selling licenses, which are overwhelmingly issued in the names of male heads of household. Women are also systematically excluded from governance institutions and decision-making spaces.
“This is not a simple gap; it is a systematic process through which women are being excluded,” expressed Pallavi Sobti Rajpal, of Utthan, an organization working with rural women and young girls in India.
The toolkit is designed to accompany efforts on the ground to advance food and gender justice by disseminating global policy tools, such as the CFS Guidelines on Gender Equality and Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment, that contains key language on universal social protection, unpaid care work, access to natural resources, and women’s collective organizing, including support for women’s organizations, women’s rights organizations and social movements.
“The question is not only whether we have rights on paper, but whether the struggles already happening on the ground are being named, protected, and strengthened” — Zaineb Al Dirani, of Maskabeh in Lebanon.
The CSIPM called on the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), UN institutions, and governments to demonstrate real political will to implement the CFS Gender Guidelines, through concrete and measurable action. This includes policy integration at national and local levels, allocation of financial resources, participatory mechanisms for policymaking, and accountability frameworks.
“The guidelines now exist. The toolkit is now in our hands. The responsibility before all of us is clear: to ensure that this shared commitment does not remain comfortably on paper”, expressed in the closing remarks Dee Woods, of Landworkers’ Alliance in the UK and La Via Campesina.
What “We Exist” means in practice: voices from the CSIPM toolkit launch
Mapping is power: it transforms fragmented information into collective action and solidarity.
Women-led and queer communities-led food initiatives in Lebanon have scaled up meals for displaced families and persons with disabilities, explained Zaineb Al Dirani, of Maskabeh (Flying Aunts), an ecofeminist collective supporting building trust-based maps, mutual aid, and community response networks. Their mapping work supports connecting shelters, kitchens, clinics, and response gaps.
“The point is not just to list initiatives. It is to see relationships, bottlenecks, duplication, absence, and potential coordination. In war, information is often fragmented in exactly the same way communities are fragmented. Mapping is one way of refusing that fragmentation and making solidarity more materially effective. —Zaineb Al Dirani
Recognizing care means recognizing a foundational yet invisible pillar of food systems.
Care work, rendered invisible and disproportionally carried by women, was another central theme during the launch. In Veracruz, Mexico, VIDA A.C. a feminist agroecological coffee initiative has advanced women’s economic autonomy, leadership, and political participation in the coffee sector.
“Care work also means valuing women’s role in agriculture and recognizing their right to health and to rest”, expressed Gisela Ilescas, of the cooperative VIDA A.C. “Food sovereignty does not need to rest on women alone, it must be sustained as a collective and intergenerational work”, she concluded.
Invisibility is a form of structural violence that limits access to rights.
A testimony shared by Souad Mahmoud from the Alliance for Food Sovereignty MENA illustrated the deep connection between gender, food, and dignity, underscoring the reality of exclusion and invisibility of gender and sexually diverse people in agriculture.
As Souad stressed, women and gender diverse people work the land, produce food, and contribute to the food security of their communities, often without contracts, social protection, or recognition.On top of this, they carry the additional burden of an identity they cannot live openly.
While guidelines exist, without real implementation on the ground, they remain just paper.
“Our rights are not negotiable. They must live in our territories”– Souad Mahmoud
Without political will, commitments remain symbolic.
In the International Year of the Woman Farmer, the CSIPM toolkit stands as an invitation to continue building from feminist perspectives in defense of human rights, and life. As Dee Woods, of La Via Campesina, stated:
“Let it not become a celebration without change. Let it be a moment that tells the truth clearly: women farmers in all our diversity are not peripheral to food security, nutrition, and food sovereignty. They(We) are central.”
The toolkit reflects the history of the collective struggle for the autonomy and self-determination of women and non-cis-heteronormative people gathered in the CSIPM Women and Gender Diversities Working Group. It is an advocacy tool, a popular education resource, and a bridge between global policy and territorial struggles.
The launch also builds momentum toward a Popular Manual to be released in June. Both tools are part of a collective effort to bridge global policy frameworks and grassroots realities, with art and popular communications tools playing a central role.
“The visual power of art makes visible what dominant media attempts to render invisible; it is a tool for building memory and territory”, explained Camila Bages, from the National Indigenous Peasant Movement – Somos Tierra, in Argentina.
She further stressed that art can help create a living archive through which future generations can reclaim and continue ongoing struggles, while reaching audiences not yet engaged in these struggles.
Read online and download the CSIPM toolkit
Useful links
- We Exist: A toolkit for gender equality and the right to food
- Watch the Toolkit launch webinar
- About the CSIPM Women and Gender Working Group
- CFS Gender Guidelines: Four- pager | Full document
Power point presentations: