TIPPING THE SCALE
How can we create a more equal food system? Parabere Forum opened the floor to leading women to find out.
How can we create a more equal food system? Parabere Forum asks leading women.
Maria Canabal is one of the most influential women in gastronomy. The award-winning journalist and author founded Parabere Forum in 2014, a not-for-profit aimed at addressing the gender imbalance in food by giving women’s voices a global platform.
“We need women’s voices to be heard and women’s talents to be deployed, so that we can construct a vision of the future based on the values of sustainability and equal opportunity,” says Canabal.
Now in its fifth year, the organisation has launched its first book, Cooking up a Better Food Future: A Women’s Vision, which Canabal describes as a manifesto of hope for the future of food. The work, which is the first in a planned series called Parabere Essays, features 100 short essays by women from Parabere’s global network, many of whom also happen to be food royalty: chefs Christina Tosi, Dominique Crenn and Elena Arzak; educators and activists Stephanie Alexander and Alice Waters; writers Joanna Savill, Licia Granello and Laura Esquivel; and women in the highest places of policy such as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Dr Hilal Elver.
Canabal tasked contributors with answering the question: “How can women change the future of food?” In their responses these women share their insights, experiences and revelations with a great sense of urgency and passion.
Chido Govera, a farmer and entrepreneur based in Zimbabwe, promotes mushroom cultivation as a means for food security and financial independence for women living in poverty in her own country and beyond. Govera believes women being part of the food value chain and responsible for production, and not just the cultural or domestic side of food, is essential.
Australian chef Christine Manfield, meanwhile, wants to see more women supporting each other to combat inequality. Lara Gilmore, co-owner of Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy, and co-founder of Food for Soul, wants to remove gender all together from food. She wants more open conversations about where our food comes from, with both men and women asking the sticky questions.
US food writer Ruth Reichl believes that one answer is to ditch “kids’ meals” and teach our children to eat well. Alice Waters agrees. The
Slow Food proponent and owner of Berkeley’s
Chez Panisse restaurant has launched The Edible Schoolyard Project to put the love back into food from a child’s perspective, focusing on how we treat the land and the producers and cooks who nourish us, and thinking of the food system as doing more than simply “feeding” us.
And Canadian filmmaker Maya Gallus argues that women are socialised to be feeders, responsible for nourishing not only babies, but also entire families and communities. She wants women’s appetites to be celebrated and accepted, too.
These women are among the voices included in Cooking up a Better Food Future: A Women’s Vision.
In the following pages, they each speak to what an equal and sustainable food future could look like.
Ruth Reichl, food writer, USA
Eating is learned behaviour; Japanese children aren’t born with an innate taste for seaweed, rice and fish any more than American children are born with a desire for hot dogs, French fries and sweet fizzy sodas. We are taught to like these things. It’s up to us to make sure we’re giving our children good information for the rest of their lives.
This means not only offering food that is fresh, clean and healthy for them, but that is also good for the planet. Among the many lessons we learn at the table is how much our food choices matter. Food connects us to the Earth and all the people who raise it.
While we’re teaching our children to eat, we’re also teaching them to think. What’s on the table is important, but so is who’s around it. We need to teach our children to enjoy the give and take that occurs at the table – one of the few times we actually slow down enough to listen to one another.
Perhaps most important of all is that we’re sharing the same meal. The idea of “children’s food” is a pernicious modern invention that sends a terrible message. What we should be saying is: “Taste this. Come join us. Pull up a chair. Life is so delicious.”
Alice Waters, owner and founder of Chez Panisse and The Edible Schoolyard Project, USA
Women innately understand nourishment. Think of the fact that women fundamentally nourish children from the moment they enter the world; we have that within ourselves. And perhaps in part because of that, I believe we have a deeper understanding that food is about nourishment, but it is also about love.
As women, we can change the way we eat through daily changes in the way we live: by buying food from the people who take care of the land, knowing who our food producers are, and eating food that’s in season. These everyday actions can have a profound effect and are their own acts of love – love for the land that produces our food, and love and respect for the people who care for it. We change how we eat when we reconnect with nature and empower our children to do the same, engaging them in every part of the process of planting a garden, harvesting their food and cooking a meal together.
Maya Gallus, filmmaker, Red Queen Productions, Canada
Women are not supposed to take up much space in this world. To ask for more. To desire. To want.
Our appetites, we are told, are shameful and must be diminished. In the process, we diminish and shame ourselves.
While making The Heat: A Kitchen (R)evolution, I discovered women who were taking up their space in male-dominated environs, and also revelling in their own appetites, taking pleasure not only in the preparation of food but in the eating of it.
Feeding others can be an act of love, a selfless thing, rightly celebrated. It’s also gendered behaviour, expected of women. Feeding ourselves, on the other hand, is a different kind of love, and, for many women, a radical act.
Female chefs are at the vanguard of change, serving as role models to new generations, not only challenging systemic discrimination, but also confronting centuries of socialisation around women and food, giving us permission to take up our space and, also, to eat with gusto. And therein lies a simple truth: that we, too, desire; we, too, hunger; and we, too, have appetites.
Chido Govera, director, The Future of Hope Foundation, Zimbabwe
Food habits are forged from a combination of two components – beliefs and technology – and different layers of society influence these two factors. In an ideal world, the two components should equally inform our habits, yet sadly, it is not the case in our world today.
Technology affects how we sow, grow, harvest and distribute food, and this is an area that has been largely controlled by men. The belief component refers to how we perceive food, its preparation, consumption, our interaction with it and the overall impact food has in our social fabric and on our ecosystem, and this aspect has, for the most part, been carried by women.
Across the world today, technology largely defines the way we eat, and this is a realm dominated by men and other privileged groups. This exclusive and unbalanced way of defining how we eat is unsustainable because it does not take into account all the dynamics of the societies we feed, from values to culture and traditional wisdom.
Women can change the way we eat by taking their place at the table and actively channelling their wealth of knowledge in the economics and dynamics of feeding the masses, engaging in decision making and promoting the food value chain.
Female chefs are at the vanguard of change, serving as role models to new generations and challenging discrimination.
Christine Manfield, chef, Australia
We flourish because we believe in the importance of women supporting women, celebrating the achievements of women in our industry, for our voices to be heard, to not be invisible, to establish a social community for women in the food and wine industry to engage, connect and collaborate, to combat gender inequality. Women are proven trailblazers, so let’s invest in each other to be fearless, to push the boundaries, to lead by example, to make brave choices, to accept and thrive on challenges and to have the courage of our convictions.
The importance of connecting women in business to resources, insights and expertise is a growth industry with unlimited potential and will give women more visibility across all levels of the hospitality industry.
Lara Gilmore, president, Food for Soul, Italy
Perhaps, the first step to change the way we eat is to remove gender from food: steaks are not for men, salads are not for girls. But as we look forward, we cannot ignore the wisdom of the ages, what our grandmothers and great-grandmothers taught us.
This legacy and the practical solutions that make the world a better place all begin at the table, not only sharing a meal but through conversation. Women and men are asking hard questions about how our food is grown and processed, how it is distributed, how much is wasted and how much can actually be recovered. Together we can shift the attention from quantity to quality, from cheap to valuable, from feeding to nourishing, to ensure more healthy and delicious meals for everyone.