Sustainable agriculture, rural development and food security cannot be achieved through efforts that ignore or exclude more than half of the rural population - women. Women constitute more than half of the agricultural labour force and are responsible for most of the household food production in low-income food-deficit countries.

Development strategies are clearly more equitable when they consider the different needs, constraints, opportunities and priorities of men and women. Compelling evidence suggests that such inclusive strategies are also far more effective and sustainable. Recognition of men's and women's valuable and distinct skills and knowledge can help to shape policies and programmes that contribute significantly to both economic growth and equity objectives.

Gender and Development (GAD), focuses on analysing the roles and responsibilities that are socially assigned to women and men, the social relations and interactions between women and men, and the opportunities offered to one and the other. The GAD approach defines gender and the unequal power relations between women and men as essential categories of analysis. Rather than focusing solely on women and «women's projects», GAD provides a framework and an obligation to re-examine all social, political and economic structures and development policies from the perspective of gender relations.

Gender mainstreaming has emerged as the common strategy employed by FAO and other development agencies to promote gender equality. Within the UN system, gender mainstreaming has been defined as «a strategy for making women's as well as men's concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.»

Only gender mainstreaming can ensure that attention to gender equality is a central part of all agriculture and rural development interventions in areas such as research, policy advice and legislation, as well as in the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of programmes and projects.

For decades, FAO, through its Gender, Equity and Rural Employment Division (ESW), has mainstreaming gender in all its areas of work in order to promote gender equality and the empowerment of rural women.

ESW’s planned actions for mainstreaming fall into the following categories:

• capacity building and the development of curricula and training materials
• development of gender-sensitive methodologies and guidelines
• awareness raising and institutional measures
• information collection, analysis and dissemination
• communication, participation and partnership building
• technology development and transfer
• policy advice
• skills enhancement of rural women and men, for both on- and off-farm employment