The Women Feeding Cities (WFC) Mexico research team, based at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM), convened a Policy Engagement Workshop on 11 December 2025 (10:00–13:00) in the city of Cholula, Puebla, Mexico. The workshop brought together 14 participants (12 women and 2 men), including women involved in informal food vending and a cross-section of local stakeholders working on economic development, commercial regulation, gender equality, public health, social development, and the governance of public space. The workshop sought to validate and get feedback on research findings and to collectively identify practical, gender-responsive directions for local public policy on food security in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The session opened with a presentation of the WFC Mexico team and an overview of the broader research ecosystem connecting the Hungry Cities Partnership, MiFOOD, and Women Feeding Cities (WFC). The team reviewed the consortium’s objectives, participating institutions, and ethical principles guiding the research, including commitments regarding responsible engagement with participants and research integrity. Dr. Salomón González introduced the Cholula context and the purpose of the workshop, while Dr. Guénola Capron presented the qualitative results from the Cholula case study.
Following this introduction, the research team presented a synthesis of the study’s findings, combining survey evidence with insights from interviews and focus groups. The presentation highlighted the central role of women vendors and women-led micro-enterprises in everyday urban food access, while underscoring how the pandemic intensified already fragile working conditions. Participants noted that many of these businesses operate under conditions of informality, frequently as micro-enterprises supported by family labour, with limited legal and labour protections.
After the presentation of findings, participants engaged in a two-round participatory technique designed to gather feedback and proposals. The first round focused on reflections about the results. Participants emphasised the vulnerability of women-led food businesses and discussed how limited professional, administrative, and financial skills can constrain access to financing and, in practice, restrict the ability to navigate or qualify for government support programmes. Importantly, participants also drew attention to the range and creativity of strategies women deployed during the pandemic to sustain their livelihoods and household food security.
Participants described concrete forms of adaptation during periods of confinement, including changing locations for food preparation and vending, searching for better prices of key ingredients, and reorganising production and sales to respond to shifting demand. Particular attention was paid to the role of smartphones and digital platforms in sustaining livelihoods: participants highlighted the use of web platforms as Facebook and WhatsApp to expand customer reach, coordinate orders, and organize food delivery, illustrating how digital tools became part of everyday survival strategies in the informal food economy.
The second round centred on policy proposals and on identifying new or improved public policies for Cholula. Participants compared perspectives across institutions and sectors. A representative from the local health sector described gender-responsive actions implemented during the pandemic, particularly initiatives aimed at addressing exhaustion, mental health impacts, and domestic violence. Participants also discussed programmes designed to support women entrepreneurs; at the same time, institutional representatives recognised that pandemic-era policies and support measures were insufficient and did not reach the women most in need in the informal economy.
Officials involved in urban planning and the management of public space highlighted the governance dilemmas faced by the city: regulating and negotiating the occupation of public space by street food vendors while maintaining safety and sanitary standards, and managing tensions with formal businesses that perceive unequal treatment and unfair competition. Across interventions, participants also underscored the policy potential of information and communication technologies, arguing that smartphones and platforms should be taken more seriously as tools for social and economic development policy with a gender perspective.
Participants from the municipal DIF (Integral Family Development system) stressed that the pandemic produced lessons that should be translated into renewed policy approaches, particularly those that recognise women household heads’ disproportionate responsibilities for care alongside their role as income providers. The workshop concluded with participants expressing strong interest in receiving the full integrated research results and in sustaining collaboration with the WFC Mexico team at UAM, with a view to maintaining dialogue and supporting actionable, locally grounded recommendations to improve the food-vending environment and strengthen urban food security.
The WFC project, funded by NFRF and IDRC, is part of the MiFOOD Network. It examines how COVID-19 public health containment and mitigation measures have affected women who are employed or self-employed in the informal food sector, with particular attention to socio-economic wellbeing and household food security. The project aims to generate gender-responsive, comparative, and locally grounded evidence to support post-pandemic recovery policies and practice.