Overview of the near east region
While countries in the region exhibit extraordinary variability in their economic, social and political structures, they nevertheless share some common environmental and agricultural features that permit them to be treated as a relatively consistent group vis-a-vis a number of important aspects of agricultural production and food security. The region is predominantly arid or semi-arid, and agriculture is primarily rainfed. Temperatures are often extreme and rainfall is both scarce and variable from one growing season to the next. As a result, agriculture is a risky enterprise, and farmers, especially those with small landholdings, often adopt production strategies, such as crop and livestock diversification, to minimize the risks associated with a variable and difficult climate.
A little over half of the region's population live in rural areas, and agriculture engages about one third to one half of its workforce (fully 1990). Population growth is very rapid, with countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Iran and Syria registering some of the highest growth rates in the world. While many countries were either self-sufficient in food production or even food exporters in the early 1960s, today, alarming quantities of foodstuffs are currently being imported into the region (about US$20 billion) to satisfy increasing demands.
A predominant proportion of the work associated with agricultural and food production is conducted by men, women and children within the context of a farming household (Glavanis and Glavanis 1983). Farm size tends to be small, with most farms constituting about 10 hectares (ha) or less, and occupying 25 % of the total arable land. Most farmers are subsistence farmers. However, large farms of 50 ha or more occupy 15 % to 45 % of the total arable land, yet constitute only a small percentage of the total number of farms (Belaid and Morris 1991). The tendency for the majority of farms in the region to be small prevents them from absorbing the available labour in large families, let alone incurring the costs of hiring labour from outside the farm. A high dependency of the farm household on the labour market for outside additional income affects the composition of farm households, with women, children and older men left behind to carry out a large bulk of the agricultural work.
Thus, because of high rural population growth rates, the lack of jobs in rural areas, low wages in agriculture, and the seasonality in the demand for agricultural labour, the region suffers from very high male temporary and permanent urban-to-rural migration as well as immigration from the poorer countries to the Arab Gulf Countries and Western Europe. Although the overwhelming majority of urban and rural households are headed by men in the Near East, women-headed households occupy a considerable percentage of total rural households and their number is increasing as a result of high migration. For example, almost a quarter of all rural households in Pakistan and the Sudan are currently headed by women. Consequently, women farmers have increasingly found themselves becoming major contributors to the agricultural labour force, the majority of whom work for very long hours all year long as unpaid family labour.
By the early 1980s, women in most countries of the region had already been granted equal rights under their constitutions, especially with regard to education, employment, social security and welfare services, although some countries introduced such provisions later than others. Thus, women were given the right to vote and hold office in Iraq in 1980, and in Yemen in 1983. In Jordan, while women were granted the right to vote and run for parliamentary elections in 1974, their right to vote and run for municipal elections was granted only in 1982.
Although several women organizations did exist in some countries prior to the early 1980s,2 little attention was given to rural women by policy-makers. National plans and development strategies had not yet fully recognized the contribution of women to food production and the importance of addressing their needs in the production process. However, increased awareness of policy-makers in the early eighties, primarily due to international efforts, led to the establishment of several important governmental offices. In Egypt, in 1977, a WID unit was established at the Ministry of Social Affairs, and a National Commission of Women was set up during the same year. In Jordan, a Women's Department was established at the Ministry of Social Development in 1980, and in Yemen, several WID units were set up in various ministries beginning in 1978 with international assistance. In Tunisia, a women's ministry was set up in 1983, while in Mauritania, several governmental units were already in place to deal with the increasing recognition of the importance of rural women in agricultural production. In Cyprus, an interministerial committee was appointed to study the position of women in society, and in 1983, two Law Reform Committees were established to revise family law to eliminate discrimination against women and ensure equal rights. In Pakistan, a women's division was established in 1979, which was later upgraded to a Ministry for Women Development.
2 The General Federation of Iraqi Women (established in 1969); The Feminist Union and the Consultative Council for Women in Mauritania (established in 1962 and 1964, respectively); Tunisia's Women's Union and very progressive Personal Status Code (1956).
In addition to the lack of institutional support for rural women, only a very small number of projects and programmes were designed to target rural women. Furthermore, most organizations and institutions dealing with rural women had no or very few women employed at the policy-making level and very few women professionals existed to promote the cause of rural women. Indicators such as illiteracy, deteriorating health conditions, and the increase of female-headed households, as well as the lack of women's access to economic structures and productive processes (credit, land, education, technology, information, training, etc.), reflect the extent to which rural women in the early eighties were neglected in the development efforts of most countries in the region.
