Category — Women

Photographer Brown Bros. New York,

1918 Cabbages and Queens
Women wearing bloomers, working in a vegetable garden.

Farmerettes of 1918, 100 years after birth of Mrs. Bloomer. In the early Victorian era, the American, Mrs. Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818-1894), caused quite a stir when she wrote an article for her feminist publication ‘The Lily’. She tried to promote the idea of women abandoning their petticoats for a bi-furcated garment later known as the bloomer fashion. She suggested that woman would find trousers, like those worn by Turkish women, easier to wear than their voluminous heavy skirts.

Njawara womens garden Rajhedem. Photo by Foods Resource Bank.

By Molly Slothower
30 July 2009 MediaGlobal – Voice of the Global South
MediaGlobal is the global news agency, based in the United Nations Secretariat, creating awareness in the media for the countries of the global South, with a strong focus on South-South Cooperation.

Urban agriculture key to alleviating world hunger

The urban poor have been hit the hardest by the global hunger epidemic, which has been fueled by the ongoing food, economic, financial, and environmental crises.

Getting healthy food into cities in sufficient quantities is an extremely difficult task. For the first time in the history of mankind, over half the world’s population lives in cities.

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The new publication Women Feeding Cities – Mainstreaming gender in urban agriculture and food security is now available online. This publication analyses the roles of women and men in urban food production, processing and marketing in case studies from 3 development regions and includes field tested guidelines and tools for gender mainstreaming.

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©2008 Evershed Card Collection

Urban Delight

The street eating graffiti takes no pity on your soul,
Yet a garden chanced upon, in a sea of concrete
Works magic in your bones,
Like foliage embracing stones.

Tilled soil gives birth to bluebells,
Baby’s breath silences the endless traffic
As urban gardeners work miracles,
With seeds of hope.

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Edited by Alice Hovorka, Henk de Zeeuw and Mary Njenga
The book (approx. 270 pages)
will be published by Practical Action Publishing, Rugby, UK.
Available: March 2009

Poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition have become critical urban problems. To confront this major challenge, food production in and around cities is an important strategy, contributing not only to food security and adequate nutrition but also stimulating supplementary income generation and social inclusion among low-income, vulnerable households in urban and peri-urban areas.

Women make up the majority of urban food producers in many cities around the world, especially predominating in household subsistence farming, with men playing a greater role in urban food production for commercial purposes.

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