Meanings of food and experiences of food insecurity among survivors accessing violence against women services during the COVID-19 pandemic
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Violence against women (VAW) poses a serious threat to the psychological and physical health of women. Food insecurity is both a cause and outcome of VAW, with further consequences for women's health. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated economic insecurity and, as a result, the cycle of VAW and food insecurity, demonstrating that VAW survivors have multifaceted needs when healing from situations of violence. OBJECTIVES: To explore meanings of food and experiences of food insecurity among VAW survivors accessing supportive services during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the goal of informing holistic and trauma-informed service delivery. DESIGN: This analysis is based on qualitative data collected as part of the mixed-methods community-based Marginalization and COVID-19 (MARCO)-VAW study. METHODS: We applied reflexive thematic analysis to qualitative interview data from 10 survivor participants who accessed VAW services in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic and supplemented it with interview data from 18 staff participants working on those services. RESULTS: We generated three themes relevant to meanings of food and experiences of food insecurity among VAW survivors: (1) power dynamics as barriers to food and achieving independence for survivors of VAW, (2) intersection between food insecurity and motherhood, and (3) reclaiming food independence and power after abusive situations. CONCLUSIONS: Food security and autonomy promoted healing and provided a sense of independence for VAW survivors living in or transitioning out of both violent situations and shelters during the COVID-19 pandemic. To better support VAW survivors, organizations that support survivors need to be appropriately resourced to provide food-related programming, supports, and diverse food options, including during public health emergencies, when economic precarity and social isolation increase. Gender-transformative policy is necessary to prevent gender-based and intersectional inequities in violence and food insecurity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.013 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".