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Women
work together on an agriculture project.
8
March 2012, Rome – One of the keys
to eradicating hunger and extreme poverty is to increase social, educational
and economic opportunities for women and girls. A new Gender Equality Policy
launched today by FAO aims to place the improvement of gender equality at the
center of the UN agency’s work to boost sustainable agriculture and
development.
FAO Director-General Graziano da Silva announced the new policy as he took
part in this year’s International Women’s Day event, held at the
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Each year, on a
rotating basis FAO, IFAD and the World Food Programme — all
headquartered in Rome, Italy
— mark the day in a joint observance.
“FAO's gender policy underscores the Organization’s commitment to addressing
gender and women’s issues to eradicate hunger and poverty,” said Graziano da
Silva.
FAO asserts that the empowerment of women could raise their farm productivity
by 20-30 percent, increase national agricultural output by 2.5 to 4.0
percent, and ultimately, lift 100-150 million people out of hunger.
Gender equality
objectives
FAO will work with countries, UN agencies, and bilateral civil society,
private sector partners and academia to make progress toward achieving the
following objectives by 2025:
1. Women and men participate equally as decision-makers in rural institutions
and in shaping laws, policies and programs.
2. Women and men have equal access to and control over decent employment and
income, land and other productive resources.
3. Women and men have equal access to goods and services for agricultural
development and to markets.
4. Women’s work burden is reduced by 20 percent through improved technologies,
services and infrastructure.
5. The percentage of agricultural aid committed to women/gender-equality
related projects is increased to 30 percent of total agricultural aid.
While countries themselves bear the main responsibility for achieving gender
equality objectives, FAO will plan, implement and monitor its programmes and
policies to ensure that they contribute to achieving those aims.
The new FAO policy recommends targets for increasing the organization’s
effectiveness in addressing gender imbalances, including incorporating
sex-disaggregated data into all major FAO statistical databases by 2015
(where relevant and available) and allocating 30 percent of FAO’s operational
work and budget at the country and regional levels to targeted, women-specific
interventions by 2017.
In a further bid to enhance its effectiveness, FAO is also in the process of
finalizing a human resources plan designed to help achieve its corporate
objective of 50 percent female representation among all internationally recruited,
professional staff worldwide. The objective is in keeping with standards
throughout the UN system.
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