This Guiding Note aims to conceptualize and raise awareness on the nexus between gender equality and food loss while offering practical guidance on and tools for integrating gender concerns into the carrying out of food loss case studies and the planning and implementation of reduction strategies and interventions.A gender-sensitive mapping of food losses provides information on the specific gender-based constraints that hinder women’s and men’s ability to efficiently par-ticipate in the food value chain, from production to consumption. The analysis of gender-based constraints provides critical information and entry points for the identification of efficient and culturally acceptable solutions to food loss. By overlooking the importance of gender dynamics and operating gender-blind, food loss reduction may be less effective and even exacerbate gender inequalities along the food value chain. Therefore, in order to be effective and have a long-lasting impact, food loss reduction strategies and interventions must from the onset take into consideration the underlying socio-cultural factors and systematically integrate gender equality concerns.

The Guiding Note suggests a four-step approach for gender-responsive food loss reduction including practical tools for its implementation: »Step 1. Gender-sensitive value chain mapping and the locating of critical loss points»Step 2. Identification of gender-based constraints linked to food losses»Step 3. Identification of entry points and solutions for gender-responsive food loss reduction»Step 4. Verification and social risk assessment of the proposed solutions to food loss

What is the relationship between the socio-cultural and institutional contexts, and food loss?
What are the underlying factors causing the inefficiency of food value chains that ultimately lead to food loss?
How do gender relations as a primary component of the social and economic context that shapes the functioning of value chains cause food losses?
How can food loss analysis and reduction policies, strategies and interventions systematically consider gender dynamics in order to be effective and long-lasting? What is the risk of applying a gender-blind approach?

This Guiding Note, Gender and food loss in sustainable food value chains, responds to these questions by focusing on the nexus between gender equality and food loss. Its purpose is to offer guidance to researchers, policy-makers and development practitioners designing and implementing food loss studies and food loss reduction interventions to systematically and more effectively integrate gender equality cerns into their work. In particular, the aim of this Guiding Note is to:
»conceptualize and raise awareness on the nexus between gender equality and food losses;
»provide guiding principles to integrate gender equality concerns in the analysis of food loss and in the design of food loss reduction interventions;
»provide practical tools to address gender equality in food loss analysis and food loss reduction strategies and interventions.

The first section of Part I of the Guiding Note introduces the concept of the “food loss and gender nexus”: the inter-linkages and the influence of socio-cultural and gender dimensions on the efficiency of food value chains and on food losses.
Section 2 demonstrates how to identify the different roles and constraints of women and men along nodes of the food value chain and locate critical loss points using a gender-sensitive mapping of food losses.

Section 3 provides guidance on how to design gender-sensitive food loss reduction interventions that are long-lasting and effective by taking into consideration the different needs, constraints and preferences of women and men in carrying out their activities along the value chain.

Part II provides four practical steps and tools to systematically address gender equal-ity in food loss analysis and food loss reduction interventions.

# Globally, approximately one-third of the food produced for human consumption, about 1.3 billion tonnes per year, is estimated to be lost or wasted (HLPE, 2014).
# This amount varies greatly in accordance with the commodity through-out the different regions of the world and throughout the different steps of the food value chain.
# Food is lost from the initial agricultural production to final household consumption.
As a result, loss and waste negatively affect food security and require the global agriculture system to produce additional food to compensate.
# The economic cost of food loss and waste is roughly US$940 billion globally each year (Lipinski and O’Connor, 2016).
# In sub-Saharan Africa, post-harvest losses amount to up to US$4 billion per year (ibid.).
# The environmental costs are also very high: food loss and waste are a major contributor to climate change, accounting for 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions annu-ally (FAO, 2015).
# In addition, current estimates indicate that approximately 28 percent of the world’s agricultural land area is used to produce food that is never consumed by humans (FAO, 2013). The potential benefits of reducing food loss and waste are large.