Food Studies Commons^™

Navigating The Cairene Table: Food And Family Between What Is Ideal And What Is Real, Iman Afify

Theses and Dissertations

Our daily encounters with food, especially during our childhood, play a crucial role in shaping and informing our identity and our habitus. In this research, by using multimodal and auto ethnography, I argue that due to the guiding path that our senses carve for us, we make sense and contextualise our surroundings through our senses, and not only the five senses of vision, smell, taste, hearing, and touch, but also through our inner senses of time and temporality, and how time and memory play an important role in the registration of our surroundings through our bodies and senses. I am …

Sweetness And Femininity: Fashioning Gendered Appetite In The Victorian Age, Michael Krondl

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since at least the nineteenth century sweetness and a preference for sweet foods has been linked to femininity. Western, middle-class women learned and reproduced normative gendered dietary behavior due to both private and public pressure to control their appetites and those of their children. In performing their gendered roles, they came to embody them through everyday rituals such as teatime. Sugary foods and drinks served as necessary props in these performances. Theorists, most prominently Jean-Jacques Rousseau, began to propose a linkage of sweet foods with femininity in the seventeen hundreds. In the following century, the medical profession explained women’s tastes …

Cooking Up Inequality: An Ethnographic Study Of Racial Hierarchies In Miami's Restaurant Industry, Judith C. Williams

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Racial inequality is a significant problem in the US Restaurant Industry. In Miami, a tropical tourist destination with a majority Latinx population, restaurants serve as a site of multiculturalism, and are promoted by officials as a place where visitors can enjoy ethnic food and culture. However, these same locations of diversity are also spaces where whiteness is normalized as superior and racial hierarchies ensue. Previous studies have documented racism in the restaurant industry but fail to address the intersectional complexities that arise when race is layered with gender, class, nationality, language, and sexual orientation.

Drawing from a 13-month ethnographic study …

Egyptian Women’S Agriculture Contribution; Assessment Of The Gender Gap For Sustainable Development, Noha El Khorazaty

Theses and Dissertations

Women’s contribution to the agriculture sector in developing countries is undeniable, yet they do not have equal access to the resources and opportunities they need to be more productive. Sustainable development entails inclusive and effective management of natural resources, this entails gender equity in agriculture. Bridging the gender gap in agriculture far exceeds the benefits of the individual. According to the latest estimates bridging the yield gap in agricultural productivity could possibly decrease the numbers of undernourished people in the world by around 100 – 140 million people. Sustainable agriculture development and gender equity necessitate policy interventions targeting the gender …

Resilience In The Mountains: Exploring The Labor And Motives Of Food-Caregiver Women Repairing Broken Food Systems In West Virginia Communities, Heidi Lynn Gum

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Over the past four years the Food Justice Lab, now housed within the Center for Resilient Communities at West Virginia University, hosted a series of food access planning workshops across the state of West Virginia. Mobilizing more than 200 participants, the Nourishing Networks workshop training program was designed to build grassroots capacity for food system change. Eighty-percent of workshop participants were women and dialogues recorded at these events revealed how women are disproportionately impacted by food insecurity and disproportionately labor to repair a broken food system. Women in West Virginia are not only growing food, feeding their families, selling it …

Better Together: Improving Food Security And Nutrition By Linking Market And Food Systems, Martha Cruz Zuinga, Monty L. Lynn, Elly Kaganzi Mwesigwa, Dan Norell, Vidhya Sriram, Emmanuel Tumusiime

Management Sciences

Market-based approaches to food security often increase agricultural productivity and income yet sometimes fail to enhance nutrition. When food security programming combines market and food systems with a specific focus on women and girls, economic and nutrition outcomes benefit. We identify distinctive and shared elements from market and food systems and highlight how they enhance nutrition outcomes when they are combined. We describe food security programming by CARE and World Vision in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, demonstrating nutrition gains in food insecure households.

Agency And Empowerment On Women-Owned Farms: A Vermont Agricultural Case Study, Caroline R. Putscher

Food Systems Master's Project Reports

When examining data from the most recent US Census of Agriculture (2012), I noticed a distinct imbalance between the percentages of male and female farmers, both in the country and in Vermont. Sales from women-owned farms represent only 3.3 percent of the total of U.S. agricultural sales, and in Vermont, women were the principal operators of 22.38 percent of farms. I wanted to examine the factors that led to these imbalances, and also understand from women farmers themselves what strategies they used to overcome these obstacles. The theories of agency and empowerment can be used in explaining women’s inequality in …

Gender And Food Access In Adams County: Food Provisioning, Identity Formation, And Survival, Emma E. Korowotny

Student Publications

This project analyzes food access issues in Adams County, specifically within the setting of South Central Community Action Programs and the Gleaning Project through the collection of individual testimonies. Budget, time, transportation, health, and household composition emerged as common themes that affect food access within this rural community and limit choice and agency, and also serve as a major influence in the process of food provisioning and identity formation, especially in terms of motherhood, parenting, and caregiving. In most cases, due to these systemic shortcomings, individuals and families navigated multiple solutions to these challenges in order to sustain themselves and …

The Impact Of Beauty, Body Image, And Health Discourses On Eating Disorder Risk In South Asian-Canadian Women, Nazia Bhatti

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study explores socio-cultural influences that impact South Asian women’s self-perceptions and eating behaviours. The findings revealed that cultural gender ideologies played a substantial role in shaping the way women view themselves and their bodies. The analysis of interviews conducted with seven South Asian-Canadian women between the ages of 19-29 years, demonstrate that women’s perceptions of their own physical appearance is framed within the context of their South Asian cultural identity and cultural norms. This study was approached through the lens of post-colonial feminism by examining cultural factors that contribute to South Asian women’s increased risk for developing eating disorders. …

No. 15: The Food Security Implications Of Gendered Access To Education And Employment In Maputo, Cameron Mccordic, Liam Riley, Inês Raimundo

Hungry Cities Partnership

The multiple linkages between gender and household food security in cities have been observed in diverse settings, at multiple scales, and through a variety of disciplinary lenses. The Hungry Cities Partnership is rooted in the importance of inclusive growth of cities, which includes a fundamental concern with genderbased injustices that reduce inclusivity, sustainability and food security by underpinning structural poverty. This discussion paper is motivated by the gap in policy-ready quantitative data needed to identify the ways in which gender inequality, food insecurity, and public policy are interconnected. Analysis of the 2014 survey of household food security in Maputo identified …

No. 09: Comparing Household Food Security In Cities Of The Global South Through A Gender Lens, Liam Riley, Mary Caesar

Hungry Cities Partnership

Understanding the determinants of urban food insecurity requires sensitivity to local cultural contexts and taking into account a globally relevant framework for analysis. A gender lens is amenable to this kind of analysis because it is rooted in local configurations of households, livelihoods and consumption patterns, while also being animated by a longstanding global effort to create a world in which men and women are equal. This discussion paper is aimed at academic researchers and development practitioners concerned with urban food insecurity. It demonstrates the usefulness of a gender lens of analysis for generating new insights and questions about household …