Women feeding the world: A global view of women in agriculture and fisheries
At the age of 36, Saoudé Garba has begun to take control of her life. When she was very young, she married a village leader in Niger and had her first child at the age of 15. Eight more followed. Her destiny was marked by tradition: her life would consist of taking care of household chores, raising children and obeying her husband. Like other women in her village, Saoudé did not know she had rights, much less that she could exercise them to improve her life.
That is until she started attending a Dimitra club. For more than a decade, these debate clubs have been key to empowering people and women’s leadership in rural areas of many sub-Saharan African countries. She learned to read and write at literacy centres run by FAO and UN Women and trained to become a farmer in her own right. She now grows millet, cowpeas and peanuts, and her crops are improving year after year. She organises her production as follows: one third is for family consumption, one third is for sale and one third is reserved for her own products. She also leads a network of Dimitra clubs and has established partnerships with officials to empower women, not only in her village, but throughout the region.
Saoudé’s story is an example for other women, but it does not represent the reality of the majority.
Putting women on the map
Gender inequality is present in all societies, even in the most advanced in terms of gender equity. But the situation is much more serious in rural and fishing areas, where women are small producers and need up to three full working days to ensure their family’s subsistence. “We are producers, we take care of the house, we manage the household, we take the children to school, we feed them, we dress them, while the man only does one job”, explains Yolanda Falcón in this video. Yolanda is the leader of the National Federation of Rural Women, an umbrella organisation of 15 women’s peasant federations in the Dominican Republic.
In addition to bearing the burden of unpaid work, rural and fishing women play an important role in the production, distribution and preparation of food. However, in many parts of the world she does not own the land, manage the profits, or have the same access to markets or trade as men. In Guatemala, for example, only 7.8% of women are landowners (visit FAO’s database on gender and land rights for more on this topic).
In terms of nutrition, history is repeating itself.
The gender gap and food insecurity
In the report, the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI 2022), FAO reveals that the nutritional conditions of women continue to show disadvantages compared to that of men. “Small producers suffer all kinds of inequalities that then have very important consequences in terms of hunger”, as stated in this video by Marcela Villareal, director of FAO’s Partnerships Division and director of the Decade of Family Farming.
During the conference organised by CEMAS on ethics and food, the expert pointed out that thanks to a new FAO methodology, it is possible to enter households and verify the gender inequality that exists in relation to hunger. “We proved with figures what we already knew. Globally, in every region of the world, women suffer more hunger than men“, Villareal points out. Moreover, in rural areas, studies show that if women had the same access to resources that men have today to produce, hunger would be reduced by at least 150 million people. We are not talking about new resources, but about the same resources that are available to people today, such as access to land, credit and information.
According to FAO Mesoamerica gender specialist Veronica Chicas Martinez, hunger is more than a major obstacle to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: “It is precisely another of the forms of violence suffered mostly by women around the world”.
The success of women is the success of our food systems
According to FAO, ensuring sustainable food systems is only possible if women around the world are empowered and their rights are recognised and respected. The organisation knows from experience that when rural women are given better access to resources, services, economic opportunities and decision-making, the results are clear: communities have more food, their nutritional status improves, rural incomes increase, and food systems become more efficient and sustainable.
A multifaceted approach to changing unequal power dynamics
FAO adopts integrated and transformative gender approaches in all its agriculture and rural development programmes. However, achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment is a multifaceted and complex undertaking that requires coordinated action among different organisations.
One of these partnerships involves three United Nations agencies: FAO, IFAD and WFP who have come together to implement the Joint Programme on Transformative Gender Approaches to achieve food security, improved nutrition and sustainable agriculture. Together they work to improve rural women’s access to resources and services, such as land, credit, training, information, inputs and agricultural technologies.
Specifically, this union has helped to improve women’s economic empowerment by enhancing financial inclusion in Malawi. In Ecuador, the programme is seeking to reduce barriers and the gender gap in family agriculture and value chains, strengthening the productive capacity of rural women and their access to services and markets. But this is not FAO’s only gender equality initiative.
In Panama, for example, the joint efforts of FAO and the Aquatic Resources Authority of Panama (ARAP) and the indigenous government of the region have managed to increase the resilience and independence of Guna women while promoting the responsible and sustainable use of marine and natural resources. In Fiji, based on data collected by FAO and the University of the South Pacific, two women created a free app to encourage their people to consume local produce, grow their own food and follow a healthier lifestyle.
Fortunately, there are more and more stories of women taking charge of their lives and fighting inequalities to build sustainable and inclusive food systems and resilient and peaceful societies. Let’s not forget that behind our food, there is always someone who produced, planted, harvested, fished or transported it. And in many cases, it is a woman.