WUNRN
United
Nations Commission on the Status of Women-55thSession
Interactive
Expert Panel
THE
EMPOWERMENT OF RURAL WOMEN AND THEIR ROLE IN POVERTY AND HUNGER ERADICATION,
DEVELOPMENT AND CURRENT CHALLENGES
Written
Statement by MARCELA VILLARREAL
FAO
– Food and Agriculture Organization
IFAD
– International Fund for Agricultural Development
WFP
– World Food Programme
On behalf of FAO,
IFAD, and WFP, I am delighted to address the priority theme for the next CSW,
the empowerment of rural women. An in-depth discussion on rural women was long
overdue. The rural areas are home to the majority of the population in the
poorer countries.
Indeed, 71% of the
populations of the least developed countries and 55% of the less developed
countries live in the rural areas. The rural areas are also home to 70% of the
developing world’s 1.4 billion extremely poor people.
Most of the world’s
rural people depend on the agriculture sector for their livelihoods. In 2008,
two thirds of employed women and men in sub-Saharan Africa worked in
agriculture, mainly as unpaid family workers or own account workers. In South
Asia, 70% of women and 44% of men workers were engaged in agriculture. This is
also the sector that contains the highest proportion of precarious jobs, mostly
characterised by informal arrangements, low levels of remuneration and little
or no social and health protection. Yet it is the mainstay of the economy of
most of the developing countries.
The agriculture sector
has suffered decades of neglect, with steadily declining investment from both
domestic and international sources. While in the 80s some 12% of ODA went to
agriculture, by 2003 it had shrunk to 3%. This neglect has had detrimental
consequences for the world as a whole, including creating the conditions for
the food crisis of 2007-08, and for the billions of women and men that
depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. This neglect has translated in
increasing levels of hunger and poverty. The world was able to reduce the
proportion of hungry people only when investment in the agricultural sector was
relatively high.
Agriculture and
off-farm rural employment constitute the basis for ensuring global food
security and rural women’s economic empowerment. This empowerment is not only
essential for the eradication of hunger and poverty. It is the basis for other
forms of empowerment. Remunerated employment enhances women’s self esteem as
well as their capacity to participate in the decisions that affect them in the
family and in the community. This participation will contribute to improve
their status and to change the cultural norms that limit their opportunities.
There is ample evidence for the multiplier effects of rural women’s economic
empowerment, including improving the nutritional status of their family members
and the reduction of hunger. Education is another powerful status enhancer with
strong multiplier effects. All forms of empowerment are closely linked, but
research has shown that economic empowerment is among the most powerful
enablers of other forms of empowerment.
Rural women’s economic
empowerment depends on their capacity to produce in agriculture, mostly as
small holder farmers and on the quality of the off-farm employment they have
access to. There are major shortcomings in both. Women have consistently less
access than men toessential productive resources such as land (first and
foremost), rural finances, agricultural inputs, technology, education and
information. They are also less organized and have less voice in the
organizations in which they do participate. Plots managed by women produce
significantly less than those managed by men due to this systematic lower
access. However, it has been shown that under conditions of equality, women
produce as much or more than men. This has clear implications for the agenda of
any government that is serious about its objectives to reduce hunger.
Evidence shows that,
although gender inequality varies considerably between regions and sectors,
globally, women benefit less from rural employment, whether self- or wage
employment, than men do. Women face inequalities in all the pillars of the
decent work agenda defined by the ILO and adopted by the whole of the UN
System: employment creation/enterprise development, social protection,
standards and rights at work and governance and social dialogue.
In rural labour
markets, women and men often work in different combinations of employment, for
example as self-employed farmers, temporary waged workers, employers, and as
unpaid family workers. Women often work in the lowest paid and most precarious
forms of employment and outnumber men among the unpaid family workers.
Women are more engaged
than men in domestic and reproductive tasks, which are crucial for the
maintenance of households, families and communities, but remain largely
invisible to the economy.This restricts their time and mobility to engage in
productive work. Rural women work longer hours than men. In Benin and Tanzania,
for example, rural women work 17.4 and 14 hours more than men per week, while
rural Indian women work almost 11 hours more than urban women and 12 hours more
than urban men. Rural women in most parts of the world continue to be
underserved by technologies. The poorest women continue to use labour-intensive
traditional technologies or use no technologies at all.
Underdeveloped
physical and social infrastructure and services in remote areas, including
roads, telecommunication and transport systems, water supply and health and
child care increase women’s reproductive workload. This is compounded by
droughts, environmental degradation, climate change and HIV and AIDS,
increasing the burden on women and girls to take care of their sick family members
and orphaned children. As a result, girls in particular end up dropping out of
school.
Insufficient or
unequal access to education and training for rural youth, particularly girls,
is a major constraint for their possibility of obtaining decent and productive
employment in their adult life. Too few women are trained as technicians and
scientists in agriculture and related fields. This limits their capacity to run
productive farm and off-farm enterprises, and to obtain skilled jobs and jobs
in non-traditional agricultural export industries, which tend to be better paid
than traditional agricultural ones.
There are also vast
inequalities within the rural areas, with indigenous women suffering double or
triple discrimination. Indigenous women, however, have vast resources that tend
to be overlooked or ignored by centralized development models, such as their
indigenous knowledge in particular related to plant and animal genetic
resources, biodiversity and medicinal plants.
What can countries do?
Rural women’s
empowerment should be high on every country’s development agenda. It is not
only essential for the status of women and their personal realization; it will
bring major national gains in reduction of poverty and hunger. A package of measures is needed, as there are no silver
bullets and no single-sector measure can be fully effective. A part of this package
is outlined here below.
Investment in
agriculture is
a matter of priority. However, not any investment will do the trick.
People centred investments needs to take
into account women’s and men’s specific needs and aim to promote gender
equality and women’s empowerment. Promotion of Decent work in agricultural employment will
result in enhanced productivity as well as in reduced hunger and poverty.
Ensuring women’s access to market and their role in value chain development
deserves greater attention. Agriculture
sector policies need to be gender sensitive and include provisions to measure their
differential impact on men and women. Gender sensitive policies to promote small
holder production and productivity are especially important, as women represent
a significant part of the small holders and small producers.
Specific
policies to reduce gender inequalities in access to all productive resources, including land, financial services,
agricultural inputs, technology, education, training and information, are of
the utmost importance. Ensuring education for every girl and boy, from primary
to vocational training, will also be a central intervention with strong
multiplier effects.
Rural
institutions, in
particular farmer and producer organizations need to be strengthened, ensuring that
women participate in equal terms as men and have equal voice in their decisions.
Rural women also need to have a voice in local and regional government and have
equal access to services and public administration.
Investment in
rural physical and infrastructure and
in particular in services that reduce women’s reproductive work burden such as
water and energy supply, health and child care will go a long way in
contributing to rural women’s economic empowerment.
Developing countries’
capacity to collect and analyse sex-disaggregated
data about
women in agriculture and rural areas and their use will contribute in an
important way to more effective policies and to enhance rural women’s
empowerment.
Special efforts need
to be taken to ensure that rural women are cognisant of their human rights and that an
enabling environment is
promoted for them to be able to exercise these rights.
Social protection
measures should be developed taking into account rural women’s needs.
Productive safety nets such as subsidized fertilizer and other agricultural
inputs need to reach women small holders and not only men, as has been the case
up to now.
Special attention needs to be paid to the specific needs of all rural women, and in particular to those who tend to be doubly marginalised, such as indigenous women. Valorising women’s vast indigenous knowledge will not only contribute to rural women’s empowerment, but to society as a whole.
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