this suggests a need for questions concerning gender equality and for representation of womens interests to be included by institutions from the local to the global level action and pressure from social movements are central in challenging and reworking the discriminatory cultures practices biases and stereotypes that are often evident in policy institutions and organizations in many countries and regions informal economy workers producers and consumers are organizing collectively both to contest dominant development models and to advocate for and indeed demonstrate alternatives they include la via campesina which since the s has grown into a globallynetworked movement to defend the rights of smallholder farmers in the face of pressures from largescale corporate agriculture