Women Redefining the Experience of Food Insecurity

This outstanding collection applies feminist perspectives to food insecurity among female immigrants and citizens in the USA, Central America, and Canada.  It uncovers the constraints women face in feeding themselves and their families, the health issues resulting from inadequate food, and women’s agency and empowerment in combatting hunger and building solidarity communities. Clear, comprehensive, and engaging, this book is essential reading for those seeking to understand the structural roots of hunger and their particular impacts on women. -- Carole Counihan, Millersville University, author of “A Tortilla Is Like Life: Food and Culture in the San Luis Valley of Colorado”
Janet Page-Reeves' collection adds breadth and depth to ongoing popular and academic discussions of the complex nature of food insecurity. By focusing on the stories of women in diverse contexts, the collection offers new insights into how women and their families cope with multiple and varied barriers to food access. An essential read for scholars and students of the gendered dimensions of food (and other) inequities. -- Catarina Passidomo, University of Georgia
Women Redefining the Experience of Food Insecurity lays several important issues squarely on the table for both trainees and their mentors: food insecurity as a managed process reflects the intersections of ethnicity, gender, and social and political contexts; anthropologists and other social scientists with their rich traditions of inquiry shine a light on lives both constrained and empowered by issues of food access; agency and structure are inseparable forces that conspire to create numbers of food insecure households rejected as too high to be real, but are real nonetheless. -- Lynn McIntyre and Laura Anderson, University of Calgary
Women Redefining the Experience of Food Insecurity: Off the Edge of the Table transforms our understanding of food insecurity and hunger in the U.S. and Central America. These 12 case studies focus on low-income women who must negotiate the constraints of the food system in order to put nutritious food on the table. They strategize in order to access food stamps and charity food pantries, find bargains in low-price grocery stores, and exercise skill and imagination as they cook meals in their kitchens. Most important, each chapter goes beyond the shopping cart and the dinner table to examine what is ‘off the edge of the table.’ These structural constraints include neoliberal economic policies that keep wages low and reduce public assistance, a corporate food system that creates ‘food deserts’ in low-income communities, and ideologies that demonize uneducated consumers who make poor food choices. In these vivid accounts women emerge as knowledgeable active agents who develop food access expertise and find new sources of power and identity as creative cooks and caregivers. -- Louise Lamphere, University of New Mexico
A useful collection for scholars of food and poverty. . . .Summing Up . . . [for] Specialists. * CHOICE *