Different frameworks for building capabilities result in different material outcomes for women in four Haitian community-based organizations: two mixed-gender versus two women’s organizations. This study shows that frameworks deployed by the women’s organizations pay attention to gendered strategic interests by enhancing capabilities and functionings that communities and individuals value. Their frameworks resembled Nussbaum’s (2011, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach.

This dissertation applies a gendered analysis to the problem of food insecurity in Haiti, in order to document the impact from, and local responses to, a gender-blind and supply-centric world food economy. This is achieved by investigating the ways in which female and male rural and peri-urban peasant farmers and female urban poor, in northern Haiti, achieve food security. In so doing, I offer an alternative to the dominant narrative of food security, in Haiti, produced by institutional actors.