#BTColumn – Rural women growing food for all

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by Wayne Campbell

“If we are going to see real development in the world then our best investment is women.”–Desmond Tutu.

The international community recently commemorated International Day of Rural Women. Established by the United Nations General Assembly in its resolution 62/136 of 18 December 2007, the day recognises the huge role that rural mothers, daughters and grandmothers play in producing food, and building agricultural and rural development worldwide.

The United Nations’ International Day of Rural Women celebrates and honours women and girls living in rural areas on 15 October each year.

Rural women are often absent from the negotiation table. In many instances not much government attention and practical support is given to the rural economy, where agriculture continues to be the main contributor to people’s livelihoods.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the inequalities which exist between urban and rural; men and women; the digitally connected and those without access. National statistics in several Caribbean countries highlight a significant gender gap across the agricultural sector.

In Grenada for example, only 22 per cent of registered farmers are women. In Jamaica, 30 per cent of registered farmers are women, which is the highest in the region.

The gender gap is even wider in agricultural jobs, ranging from a female share of only six per cent in Belize, to a high of 24.5 percent in Trinidad and Tobago. Maryellen Kennedy Duckett writing in the National Geographic states in developing countries, only 10 to 20 per cent of landholders are women.

She added that in some parts of the world women still cannot legally own or control land. According to the United Nations (UN) 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 malnutrition.

On average, women make up more than 40 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries, ranging from 20 per cent in Latin America to 50 per cent or more in parts of Africa and Asia.

Yet women face considerable discrimination when it comes to land and livestock ownership, equal pay, participation in decision-making entities, and access to resources, credit and market for their farms to flourish.

The UN states improving the lives of rural women is key to fighting poverty and hunger. Giving women the same opportunities as men could rise agricultural production by 2.5 to 4 per cent in the poorest regions and the number of malnourished people could be reduced by 12 to 17 per cent.

The theme for International Day of Rural Woman is rural women cultivating good food for all, let’s recognise the work of these heroines in the food systems of the world, and let’s claim rural areas with equal opportunities for all.

“Gender-based inequalities in accessing land, labour, financial capital, technology and market information, are partly to blame. Compared to men, women are generally less equipped to face the challenge of transitioning from subsistence farming to commercial agricultural production,” says Ida Christensen, Adviser to the Strategic Program to Eradicate Hunger, Food Insecurity and Malnutrition, at the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).

According to Jamaica’s Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA), the 30 percent officially registered female farmers in the country only own 11 percent of the land under cultivation. This means that a large majority of rural women work and depend economically on land that does not legally belong to them.

The United Nations declares women and girls in rural areas suffer disproportionately from multi-dimensional poverty. While extreme poverty has declined globally, the world’s 1 billion people, who continue to live in unacceptable conditions of poverty, are heavily concentrated in rural areas. Poverty rates in rural areas across most regions are higher than those in urban areas.

Yet smallholder agriculture produces nearly 80 per cent of food in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and supports the livelihoods of some 2.5 billion people.

Women farmers 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.

Cultural Norms as Barriers

The United Nations states that 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, even as their workloads become increasingly heavy due to the out-migration of men.

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.

Decent Work

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) declares that women play important roles in the rural economy as farmers, wage earners and entrepreneurs.

Women also take responsibility for the well-being of the members of their families, including food provision and care for children and the elderly.

Rural women’s unpaid work, particularly in poor households, often includes collecting wood and water. Women from indigenous and grassroots communities are often also custodians of traditional knowledge, which is key for their communities’ livelihoods, resilience and culture.

Yet, women in rural areas face constraints in engaging in economic activities because of  gender-based discrimination and social norms, disproportionate involvement in unpaid work, and unequal access to education, healthcare, property, and financial and other services. They are also disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of environmental disasters and climate change.

The Way Forward

Unfortunately, lip service is the dominant theme in matters relating to women. Perhaps, this is the year when there will be a sense of urgency to address the needs of rural women in particular. We have never had a woman as Minister of Agriculture in Jamaica.

Like most other societies we are locked into a stereotype in which we see only men as  filling certain roles. There needs to be some interrogation into these biases which have stymied our progress over the decades.

There needs to be a global recommitment regarding the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #8, which speaks to the promotion of sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.

Societies and governments need to revisit their training and education programmes in order to make them more gender-responsive, by tailoring the content and delivery modalities to the needs of women.

If we are truly serious about uplifting rural women in agriculture and other linkage industries we must work towards introducing realistic quotas for women’s participation in training on cropping/fishing/livestock rearing practices, climate change adaptation and appropriate technologies; and promote the gender-sensitivity of rural advisory services, as a means of eliminating explicit and implicit discrimination in participant selection.

As the international community looks beyond the COVID19 pandemic the issue of food security must be given priority. Given that the global community has been experiencing increases in consumer goods; it is critical that governments put the necessary investments in place to encourage women, especially rural women to explore opportunities in agriculture.

Women need to have more access to capital and titles in order to acquire land so as to uplift themselves and their families out of generational poverty which is so prevalent in rural communities.

Societies will never achieve sustainable development if such societies continue to exclude women, particularly rural women from the decision making process. All stakeholders must unite in a spirit of gender mainstreaming in order to empower rural women.

Wayne Campbell is an educator and social commentator with an interest in development policies as they affect culture and or gender issues. waykam@yahoo.com