Women are as widely employed as men in agrifood systems around the world, but their working conditions are often worse and they earn much less than men, said an FAO report on Thursday. “Closing the gender gap in farm productivity and the wage gap in agrifood system employment would increase global gross domestic product by 1 percent, or nearly $1 trillion,” said the report, the first of its kind since 2010.
The gain in productivity would reduce global food insecurity by 2 percentage points, or 45 million people, said the report. It recommended giving women greater access to assets, technology, and resources so they have an equal chance to succeed.
“If we tackle the gender inequalities endemic in agrifood systems and empower women, the world will take a leap forward in addressing the goals of ending poverty and creating a world free from hunger,” wrote FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu in the foreword to the report.
According to the report, women who work for wages in agriculture are paid 82 cents for every $1 that men earn. Women have less access to training and credit than men and fewer rights to land; in 40 of the 46 countries surveyed, men have greater land ownership or tenure rights than women. Those inequalities, along with discrimination, result in a 24 percent gap in productivity between women and men farmers on farms of equal size.
Although comparable portions of men and women are employed in agrifood systems, “women’s roles tend to be marginalized, and their working conditions are likely to be worse than men’s — irregular, informal, part-time, low-skilled, labor-intensive and thus vulnerable,” said the report.
Women dominate the agrifood workforce in southern Asia and outnumber men in the sector in sub-Saharan Africa, examples of how in many countries, food production on and off the farm is a more important livelihood for women than men.
“Reducing gender inequalities in livelihoods, access to resources, and resilience in agrifood systems is a critical pathway towards gender equality and women’s empowerment and towards more just and sustainable agrifood systems,” said the report.
“Interventions alleviating women’s workloads and improving their productivity have been particularly successful when they address care and unpaid domestic work burdens, strengthen women’s capacities through education and training, improve access to technology and resources, and strengthen land-tenure security. Closing the gender gaps in landownership and secure tenure is particularly important as secure land rights have multiple positive impacts.”
The FAO report, “The status of women in agrifood systems,” is available here.