UN Women, the United Nations entity for women’s empowerment, has on October 15, 2017, which was the International day of Rural Women, recalled some of the inequalities suffered by women in access to agricultural land, in developing economies especially. 

“Women farmers are ‘just as productive and enterprising’ as male counterparts, but often lack equal access to land, credit, agricultural inputs, markets and high-value agrifood chains that are essential to their livelihoods,” said Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive director of UN Women. 

This is indeed a concerning situation given that half of the agricultural workforce in developing countries are women. “Women represent a significant part of agricultural workforce, both formal and informal – nearly a half of agricultural workforce in developing countries. They thus participate significantly to agricultural production food security and nutrition, management of land and natural resources and to the reinforcement of climate change adaptation capacities,” reads the institution’s statement released in this framework.

To provide a beginning of answer to this unfairness, UN Women has placed the 2017 edition of International day of Rural Women under the theme: “Challenges and opportunities in climate-resilient agriculture for gender equality and the empowerment of rural women and girls.”