WUNRN
IFAD
- The International Fund for Agricultural Development
LATIN AMERICA & CARIBBEAN -
ADDRESSING INEQUALITIES & INCREASING ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT FOR MORE
MARGINALIZED RURAL WOMEN
Despite significant economic progress in Latin
America and the
In Latin America and the
Financial inclusion is another
area where women are often marginalized. While credit and other financial
services are basic requisites for increasing agricultural production and
establishing income-generating enterprises, the rural poor, and especially
women, are unable to access these services. Many lack the legal status to
access loans even if they are the head of their household, and some have no
security to offer when borrowing as they have no assets and do not own the land
they work on. There are instances where women do not even own the house in
which they live.
Access to and use of land remains
a serious problem throughout the region. Most small-scale rural producers work
small plots, usually located in marginal lands with low productivity.
Furthermore, the gradual loss of productive land – which affects a large
proportion of the rural poor – contributes to the persistence of rural poverty.
In some cases, indigenous groups have lost access to land because of their
limited knowledge about property rights. For rural women, this situation is
often aggravated because they lack official land title and civil registration
documents. Many women are not recognized as landowners, and even if their
husbands leave or die, the land is not passed on to them or their children.
IFAD-funded projects in the region address gender inequalities and contribute to the economic empowerment of women by expanding and improving the quality of rural enterprises, increasing financial inclusion and supporting processes to assist women in obtaining identity cards or land registration.
Women obtain identity
cards with the support of IFAD projects
Lack of social registration and/or legal documents constitutes a severe problem for many rural women in the region. This problem becomes particularly evident when it comes to land registration. In most countries, if a woman is not legally registered, she cannot obtain a land title. Several IFAD-financed projects assist women to undergo the registration process themselves. The Dom Helder Camera project in northeast Brazil launched a campaign to help women obtain identity cards and other documents that enabled them to qualify for state benefits. The campaign has helped 15,000 women obtain recognition of their citizenship, guaranteeing them access to services, credit and land tenure as well as the possibility to organize and start their own businesses. In Bolivia, two ongoing projects, the Plan Vida-PEEP to Eradicate Extreme Poverty and the Economic Inclusion Programme for Families and Rural Communities of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, are assisting women and their families to obtain identity cards (10,800) and birth certificates (30,000) to facilitate access to financial services. Similarly, in Peru, the Strengthening Local Development in the Highlands and High Rainforest Areas Programme supports women to obtain identity cards in an area where 65 per cent of the women are not legally registered. Also, in Honduras, the Project for Enhancing the Rural Economic Competiveness of Yoro targets the indigenous population of the Tolupan tribes and assists them in obtaining identity cards so that they may access their basic rights. Seventeen tribes in the Department of Yoro have benefitted from this initiative, with a total of 833 women, 814 men and 318 children. It is the first time that people who are not included in the national register have been targeted.
Economic empowerment of
rural women entrepreneurs
IFAD is partnering with UN Women to implement the project Broadening Economic Opportunities for Rural Women Entrepreneurs in Latin America and the Caribbean Region. The project aims to address the difficulties women entrepreneurs face in accessing resources, assets and services that are necessary to expand or consolidate their business activities. Poverty and extreme poverty in the region tend to be concentrated among seasonal wage workers, subsistence farmers and micro-entrepreneurs – rural occupations that often are dominated by workers who are either indigenous or Afro-descendant women. Young rural women are also specifically targeted by the project. They are often "invisible" actors in rural development projects, despite the fact that they are the backbone of many rural families, making important economic and social contributions. Women's contribution to production and processing of traditional and high-value crops is often not recognized, as women are frequently confined to less visible and less remunerated activities of the value chain.
The project was launched in June
2014 in Guatemala with two workshops for more than 150 rural women,
representing organizations which were likely to participate in the project. The
project target group includes 180 women's group-owned enterprises (formal or
informal), comprising approximately 3,600 rural women, 60 per cent of whom are
indigenous and Afro-descendant women and 30 per cent of whom are young rural
women.
This partnership presents an opportunity to deepen impact and answer concrete questions on how to better support women's entrepreneurship and promote their economic empowerment. The goal is to contribute to the economic empowerment of rural women entrepreneurs in Guatemala, Mexico and Nicaragua. More specifically, the objectives are: i) to investigate more effective approaches and processes of building the capacity of excluded rural women to better manage and commercialize their business enterprises; and ii) to explore effective techniques for enhancing women's voices and power to influence local development priorities, operations, processes and relevant policies.
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