by Priya Bapat, Humanitas Global Development
Each year on March 8, the world celebrates International Women's Day by highlighting the importance, contributions and challenges of women across the globe. It is a well known fact that investing in women yields benefits not only for her, but also for her family, her community, her country and the world as a whole.
In the world of food security, women occupy center stage in any discussion around nutrition and the health and well-being of their children. Now, women are also taking a much more prominent role in global agriculture, a field traditionally dominated by men. According to UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier De Schutter, as men are migrating to urban centers in search of work, farming duties are increasingly falling to women.
Female farmers, however, face a myriad of obstacles that men do not face, including land ownership rights, authority over laborers, and access to resources such as credit, technology and inputs. The effect of these discriminations has a devastating impact. Not only do they make farming more challenging, but they also reduce total farm output, income and overall health and well-being of women and their families.
In a recent report to the UN, De Schutter writes that in countries where women lack ownership rights, there is a 60% higher rate of child malnutrition than in countries where women have these rights. For countries where women lack access to credit, the child malnutrition rate is 85% higher than in those where women have access.
When the playing field is level, however, the potential for change is equally impressive. De Schutter cites a 2010 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) which found that "if women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20–30 percent. This could raise total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5–4 percent, which could in turn reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12–17 percent."
The issue of women's rights as farmers is just one of countless examples on how gender inequalities exacerbate global challenges such as poverty, hunger and malnutrition. Only by addressing these systemtic issues can we achieve a hunger and poverty free future.
Special Rapporteur De Schutter's full report addresses additional topics on women's rights and the right to food, including employment and social protection and is available online here.
