GEAR's key objective is to study gender inequalities in agriculture and rural areas by focusing on women farmworkers and women farmers in Portugal to better understand the structural and contextual factors shaping women’s lived experiences and processes of identity construction, while also illuminating the ways in which they seek to address and overcome gender inequalities.

Cf. Portuguese version.

SWIFT, which stands for Supporting Women-Led Innovations in Farming and Rural Territories, is a 4 year funded Horizon Europe project set up with the purpose to advance the position of women and LGBTQI+ persons in farming, and to investigate how agroecological processes can promote gender equality. Despite the crucial contributions of women to European agriculture, they remain discriminated against in diverse ways. Their exclusion from social security schemes and low levels of female farm ownership are indicative of structural inequalities. The barriers to gender equality in European agriculture are socio-cultural, economic and political, including policies that frame food as a commodity and exclude the reproductive dimensions of farming. To advance gender equality, the EU-funded SWIFT project will provide new insights and co-create novel approaches with 21 agricultural women-led innovations in 12 countries distributed across Europe, as well as 4 in Brazil and the USA. SWIFT will provide theoretical and practical tools, such as gender-responsive budgeting and feminist farm viability indicators, to enable a change towards more just, effective and diversified farming.