There’s a discrepancy between the lack of female representation in hospitality and the fact women bear most of the responsibility when it comes to providing food. This inspired French journalist Maria Canabal to found Parabere Forum in 2014 to give women in the food world a voice. It’s no secret women play an essential role in providing food for their families and communities, yet they’re often missing from the public picture. UN reports show women produce more than half the food grown in the world, and despite doing the heavy lifting when it comes to cooking at home, women remain a minority in the most revered echelons of cooking – accounting for less than five per cent of Michelin stars.

“We need women’s voices to be heard and talents to be deployed so that we can construct a vision of the future based on the values of sustainability and equal opportunity,” Canabal writes in her new book, Cooking Up a Better Food Future: A Women’s Vision. It will be launched to mark five years of the annual forum, which kicks off today in Oslo. The book comprises essays by some of the 5000 women in the Parabere network, including chefs, farmers, writers, filmmakers and activists, who respond to the question “How can women change the future of food?” Here’s a snapshot.

Sixteen years ago, I started a movement to change the way children are taught about fresh food. I started with one Australian school in 2001. Today, there are 1600 schools embracing regular sessions of hands-on, pleasurable food education, which accounts for 11 per cent of all Australian schools. I hope to convince the Australian government to support this program at a level that would ensure it’s available to every child. The kitchen garden program was a planned intervention for primary school-aged children with the mantra: ‘Grow, harvest, prepare and share’. I knew growing food would not be enough to change attitudes and habits. Children needed to harvest their crops, learn how to create delicious dishes using the vegetables and herbs they had grown and – best of all – gather around a table with their friends to share the food.

For too long, women who cooked suffered from a cruel paradox. The food they produced sustained whole families and communities. Men went misty-eyed at the thought of their grandmother’s apple pie. But the great female ingenuity and craft that went into all those meals was too often overlooked. Our culture fetishised the home-cooked dinner, but the hands that held the wooden spoon were given no credit. The male chef was lionised, while the female cook was taken for granted. The thing that amazes me is not that so many women don’t cook, but that so many of us still do, despite all the other demands on our time and attention. Women have the power to show the world just how much cooking matters. We won’t be taken for granted again.

Historically, women have been a powerful force in educating children through their family lives with values that are central to food preparation – the sharing of knowledge of where food comes from and making the most of ingredients so that waste is unacceptable. This, of course, is always the hope for families, yet doesn’t always happen with the change we’ve seen in society of both partners working full time. It’s clear that if the value of the difference that beautiful food makes isn’t upheld, then all that education we’ve taken for granted in generations gone by can disappear because of the perceived necessity for convenience.

Directly engaging with my local and global community and highlighting the talents and passions of others has always been important to me. From a very young age, my mother, who was the chief cook in our family home, taught my siblings and me two very important lessons: food makes people happy and food connects people. This has certainly always been my personal experience and now in my adulthood and life as a cook and restaurateur, I know that food is an excellent and powerful way to positively influence community and culture.

Perhaps, the first step to change the way we eat is to remove gender from food: steaks are not for men, salads are not for girls. As we look forwards, we cannot ignore the wisdom of the ages, what our grandmothers and great-grandmothers taught us. This legacy and the practical solutions that make the world a better place all begin at the table, not only sharing a meal, but through conversation. Women and men are asking hard questions about how our food is grown, processed and distributed, how much is wasted and how much can be recovered. Together we can shift the attention from quantity to quality, from cheap to valuable, from feeding to nourishing, to ensure more healthy and delicious meals for everyone.