Kurt Event WSTD Capstones

The event that I am reporting on was the women and gender studies department capstone and epistemology presentations. I was one of the presenters at the event, but I found one of the projects of my fellow students particularly interesting. On the the capstone presentations from a women and gender studies major was on the impact of food deserts and what steps must be taken to eliminate them. I had already heard of all of the standard remedies, from urban farms and grocery trucks in cities to international aid and irrigation projects in developing areas, but the solution that the presenter provided was new to me. She suggested that none of these solutions would fix the problem, and that they might actually be harmful because they are not sustainable, do not arise from the community in need, and do not address the root of the problem. Instead, she proposed gender equality as the solution. She sited that fact that women and girls are more likely to face hunger than men and boys despite the fact that they do more of the manual agricultural labor, and successfully argued that gender equality would lead to more production and a more equitable distribution of food resources.