Rural Women Farmers Caring for Mother Nature
Achieving gender equality and empowering women is not only the right thing to do but is a critical ingredient in the fight against extreme poverty, hunger and climate change.
Women are responsible for while working as environmental and biodiversity stewards.
Even so, women and girls in rural areas suffer disproportionately from multi-dimensional poverty. They may be as productive and enterprising as their male counterparts but are less able to access land, credit, agricultural inputs, markets, and high-value agrifood chains and obtain lower prices for their crops.
Structural barriers and discriminatory social norms continue to constrain women’s decision-making power and political participation in rural households and communities. Women and girls in rural areas lack equal access to productive resources and assets, public services, such as education and health care, and infrastructure, including water and sanitation, while much of their labour remains invisible and unpaid. Globally, with few exceptions, every gender and development indicator for which data are available reveals that rural women fare worse than rural men and urban women and that they disproportionately experience poverty, exclusion, and the effects of climate change.
The theme of this year’s International Day of Rural Women, , honors the work rural women do every day: conserving seeds, protecting biodiversity, managing water, and restoring degraded land. They feed communities, sustain livelihoods, and safeguard the natural resources on which we all depend. On this day, we celebrate their knowledge and leadership in building a more resilient future.
Let’s promote their work as food providers and protectors of the environment. Let’s demand their participation in decision-making within their communities. Let’s promote rural areas where women can have the same opportunities as men.
Multimedia Piece
Chat with María, a worker at a tomato canning factory
Meet María, who recently started working part-time at a local tomato canning factory, and her friend Oumar, who works on a nearby farm. Through their chat, you’ll discover the essential role of rural women in the agri-food sector and how their working conditions and economic opportunities are shaped by gender inequalities within the household, the community, institutions, and society at large.
Did you know?
- Globally, women make up (2023), reaching over 50% in certain parts of Africa and Asia.
- Rural women have less access to a range of resources, from land rights and credit to education and technology. Although women make up almost four out of every ten people in the agricultural workforce, they own only about 15 percent of agricultural land.
- If women had the same access to productive resources as men, farm yields could increase by 20–30 per cent, feeding an additional 100 to 150 million people.
