Women's Rights=More Food?

Independent Films, Women

The State of Food & Agriculture Report for 2010-11 issued through the UN Food Agricultural Organization (FAO) stated if women in rural areas had the same access to land, technology, financial services, education and markets as men do, then agricultural production could be increased and the number of hungry people reduced by 100-150 million. In other words, women achieving equality translates into more more agriculture production, more feed and reduction in the percentage of the globe's desperately hungry by 12-15%.

Transcripts / Production notes / Scripts

According to a United Nations report released today (7 Mar), women in rural areas have the potential to raise agricultural production to levels that would feed up to 150 million more of the world’s hungry people if they had equal access to the means of production, including land, financial services, education and technology.

UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) State of Food and Agriculture report says that yields on plots managed by women are lower than those managed by men because women do not have equal access to capital.

At a press conference in Rome, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said “eliminating more pervasive forms of discrimination against women in agriculture would yield more and larger benefits.”

Giving women the same access as men to agricultural resources could increase production on women’s farms in developing countries by 20 to 30 per cent, raising total farm output in poorer regions by 2.5 to 4 per cent. That could in turn reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12 to 17 per cent, or 100 to 150 million people, according to the report.

An estimated 925 million people in the world were undernourished in 2010, the vast majority of them in developing countries.

Women make up on average 43 per cent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries, ranging from 20 per cent in Latin America to almost 50 per cent in East and South-east Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Diouf said gender equality and women’s empowerment should be achieved “not just because it is the right thing to do but also because it makes economic sense.”

FAO noted in the report that where rural women are employed, they tend to be segregated into lower paid occupations and are more likely to be in less secure forms of employment, such as seasonal, part-time or low-wage jobs.

The report documents gender gaps in the access to a wide range of agricultural resources, including land, livestock, farm labour, education, extension services, credit, fertilizers and equipment.

Women in all regions generally have less access to land than men. For those developing countries for which data are available, between 3 and 20 per cent of all landholders are women. The share of women in the agricultural labour force is much higher and ranges from 20 to 50 per cent in developing countries.

Directors:

• Muhamed Sacirbey

Producers:

• Susan Sacirbey