A recent analysis from the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations finds that addressing gender inequality in agrifood systems and empowering women decreases hunger, strengthens the economy, and increases resilience to shocks like climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first study of its sort since 2010 on the status of women in agrifood systems provides an in-depth analysis of the situation of women employed in all aspects of the industry, including production, distribution, and consumption.

According to the research, 36% of working women and 38% of working males are employed in agrifood systems globally. Nonetheless, women's responsibilities frequently include subordination, and their employment situations are more likely to be irregular, informal, part-time, low-skilled, or labor-intensive than those of males. Similarly, women who work in agriculture for a living make 82 cents for every dollar males make.

Women also work with technology that was created for males and have less secure land tenure, access to financing, and training. Coupled with discrimination, these injustices result in a 24% productivity disparity between male and female farmers on farms of comparable size.

The report looks at different countries and the significance of agrifood systems in terms of being of source livelihood for women than for males. For instance, 66 percent of women's work in sub-Saharan Africa is in the industry, compared to 60 percent of males. Although there are fewer women in the labour force than males, they make up the majority of workers in agrifood systems in southern Asia (71% of women vs. 47% of men).

Socioeconomic benefits

The prologue to the book quotes FAO Director-General QU Dongyu as saying, "If we address the gender inequities prevalent in agrifood systems and empower women, the world will leap ahead in meeting the goals of eliminating poverty and establishing a world free from hunger."

According to the report, eliminating the gender pay and productivity gaps in agriculture would boost the world economy by roughly $1 trillion and cut the number of people who lack access to food by 45 million.

Similar to this, programs that empower women generate more returns than those that just mainstream gender. According to the authors, if development initiatives that emphasized women's empowerment were to benefit half of the small-scale producers, it would greatly enhance the earnings of an extra 58 million people and strengthen the resilience of an additional 235 million.

"For agrifood systems to be effective, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable, all women must be empowered, and there must be gender equality. In agrifood systems, women have always been employed. It's time to make agriculture and food systems inclusive of women ", Qu says.

Climate & Global Economic Shock Induced Inequality

According to the survey, women's occupations are the first to disappear when economies contract. In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2 percent of men and 2 percent of women worldwide lost their employment in the "off-farm" portions of agrifood systems.

As a result of having to shoulder additional caregiving duties and experiencing a rise in food poverty during the epidemic, females frequently missed more school than boys. Violence against women and girls in the home has particularly escalated as a result of gender inequality.

The findings also support the notion that women are more susceptible to climate shocks and natural catastrophes since it may be more difficult for them to adjust due to a lack of resources and discriminatory gender norms. For instance, amid climate shocks like heat stress, women's labour burdens—including hours spent in agriculture—tend to diminish more slowly than men's.

Slow Progress

A decade after the FAO's last report, progress in closing most gender gaps has stalled or reversed, impeding advancements in everything from nutrition to early child development; from income to access to high-quality jobs. However, some success has been seen in closing gender gaps in digital access and finance.

Also, women are held back by inequalities in agrifood systems at all levels and in all positions. Women don't have equal access to education, finance, and basic resources like land, fertilizer, and irrigation systems, which would give women authority and allow them to contribute equally.

The authors stress that even though the degree to which national policy frameworks address gender issues has increased over the past ten years, gender inequality in agrifood systems still exists in part because of laws, institutions, and prejudiced social norms that continue to limit equal access to resources and opportunities.

Recommendations

Ultimately, the paper concludes that a key approach to gender equality, women's empowerment, and more equitable and sustainable agrifood systems are by eliminating gender disparities in livelihoods, enhancing access to resources, and fostering resilience.

This involves bridging gaps in access to resources, technology, and assets. The study demonstrates that measures to increase women's products are effective when they reduce the responsibilities of caregiving and unpaid domestic work, offer education and training, and boost the security of land tenure.

While social security programs have been found to boost women's employment and resilience, access to childcare also has a significant beneficial impact on mothers' work.

The research goes on to say that gender-transformative strategies are successful and have significant returns on investment when it comes to shifting discriminatory norms.

The authors also suggest addressing the ongoing dearth of high-quality data that is broken down by sex, age, and other kinds of social and economic distinction because this information is crucial for tracking and accelerating the progress made towards gender equality in agrifood systems.

Other key findings

• In 40 of the 46 countries that provided data for Sustainable Development Goal Indicator 5.a.1, males have more ownership or secure tenure rights over agricultural land than women.
• Between 2017 and 2021, the gender gap in access to mobile internet for women in low- and middle-income countries decreased from 25% to 16%, while the gender gap in access to bank accounts decreased from 9 percentage points to 6 percentage points.
• From 1.7 percentage points in 2019 to 4.3 percentage points in 2021, the difference between men's and women's food insecurity increased.
• Although women's participation and/or obstacles in agricultural and rural development are acknowledged in 75% of policy papers from 68 countries, only 19% of those documents specify gender-related policy goals.