publication

Peasant feminism and the representation of European rural women in UN human rights monitoring discourses

Authors:
Joanna Bourke Martignoni
Larissa DA SILVA ARAUJO
2026

This paper explores how international human rights monitoring mechanisms (HRMM) construct and radress peasant′s women realitiesin Europe. Through discoursive analysis of over one thousand UN human rights observations and recommendations (2007-2025), we examine how ‘rural women’ are produced as srights’ subjects, assessing how far peasant and popular feminist (PPF) demands are integrated intoinstitutional problem representations and solutions. Drawing on Carol Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to Be?’ (WPR) methodology and participant observation with peasant feminist movements, we find human rights discourses represent rural women in Europe as vulnerable and marginalised, focusing on ‘lacks’ in access to rights, services and infrastructures. This obscures their central political roles in agroecological movements and alternative agri-food systems. Rurality as an intersecting axis of inequality remains largely invisible. Yet a reparative reading reveals seeds of political mobilisation in UN human rights discourses. Civil society advocacy has supported incremental recognition of agroecology and socio-ecological care within HRMM. By legitimising civil society claims through authoritative human rights language and creating interpretive space for counter-hegemonic rights, these mechanisms can support peasant feminist agendas. We argue iterative exchanges among monitoring bodies, states and civil society actors offer critical opportunities to reimagine human rights in more intersectional, materially grounded and transformative ways.