La lutte des femmes rurales pour faire évoluer favorablement les inégalités entre les sexes
En mars 2018, à l’occasion de la 62ème Commission de la condition de la femme (CSW), les défis et les perspectives pour les femmes et les filles rurales seront à nouveau sous les feux des projecteurs.
Organisée par la FAO en partenariat avec le FIDA, ONU Femmes et le PAM, cette discussion en ligne vous invite à réfléchir sur la compréhension actuelle des rôles respectifs que jouent les hommes et les femmes dans les moyens de subsistance ruraux et à partager des informations, points de vues et expériences en prévision de la CSW62. L’objectif principal de cette activité est d’identifier les principales lacunes et les domaines d’action prioritaires afin d’accélérer les changements nécessaires pour faire évoluer favorablement les inégalités de genre que subissent les femmes rurales. La discussion se concentrera sur trois questions principales, présentées ci-dessous, et sera conduite au cours des trois prochaines semaines.
L’évolution des moyens de subsistance des populations rurales
Depuis le Programme d’action de Beijing de 1995, les besoins et les priorités des femmes rurales sont au cœur du programme de développement et des progrès importants ont été réalisés. Nombreuses sont les femmes qui jouissent aujourd’hui d’un meilleur accès aux marchés, aux informations, aux services financiers, à une participation accrue au secteur privé, aux formations, à l’énergie, aux technologies qui allègent le travail et aux transferts de fonds. Certaines d’entre elles ont réussi à devenir des entrepreneuses influentes dans leurs communautés, mieux respectées dans leur ménage. Les femmes jouent des rôles prépondérants à tous les niveaux des chaînes de valeur agroalimentaires, et sont des éléments clés de la sécurité alimentaire et nutritionnelle et de la gestion des ressources naturelles.
Pourtant, la vie d’un grand nombre de femmes rurales demeure inchangée. Elles travaillent pendant de longues heures et doivent assurer, outre leur travail productif, des tâches domestiques et familiales non rémunérées. L’insécurité foncière et l’incapacité de faire des emprunts sont autant d’obstacles à leur autonomisation. Trop souvent, les femmes rurales ne peuvent pas bénéficier des progrès technologiques, elles sont exposées aux risques liés au changement climatique et connaissent des pertes après récoltes importantes. Leurs vies sont également menacées par l'augmentation rapide de la population qui se traduit par une explosion démographique des jeunes, une émigration, un vieillissement de la population rurale et la dégradation des ressources naturelles.
Approches pour transformer les rapports entre les sexes
Pour atteindre les ODD et « Ne laisser personne en arrière» (leave no one behind), le Programme de développement durable à l’horizon 2030 vise des changements pour renverser la situation actuelle dans les pays et à tous les niveaux. Il est de plus en plus souvent reconnu que les approches adoptées jusqu’à présent pour lutter contre les inégalités entre les sexes sont restées insuffisantes. Bon nombre des initiatives visant à promouvoir l’égalité des sexes se sont concentrées sur l’autonomisation économique des femmes – à savoir, garantir leur accès aux intrants, à des conseils techniques et aux marchés et leur donner une voix dans les organes de prise de décisions et les institutions rurales – ce qui contribue à des gains de productivité à court terme. Cependant, pour obtenir des bénéfices durables et sur le long-terme, les femmes ne veulent pas seulement avoir un travail rémunéré ou participer aux décisions sur les dépenses réalisées avec les revenus qu’elles produisent. Elles veulent aussi voir leur qualité de vie s’améliorer, leur temps de travail domestique et familial non rémunéré réduit et ne plus subir de violences sexuelles.
Il convient de redoubler d’efforts – et d’efforts d’une autre nature – pour obtenir des bénéfices durables à même d’améliorer la qualité de vie des femmes rurales et de leurs familles. Cela demande d’aborder non seulement les symptômes des inégalités de genre, comme l’accès inégal aux ressources et aux bénéfices, mais aussi les causes sous-jacentes de ces inégalités, profondément enracinées dans les normes et les comportements en matière de genre, les relations de pouvoir et les institutions sociales.
Question 1 : Quels sont les principaux défis que doivent relever les femmes et les filles rurales ?
- Le contexte des moyens de subsistance en milieu rural a profondément changé au cours des 20 dernières années, ce qui a des répercussions importantes pour les femmes rurales. Doit-on mettre à jour nos connaissances sur les défis que les femmes et les filles rurales doivent relever ?
- En quoi les besoins et les priorités des femmes rurales diffèrent-ils en fonction de leur âge, de leur niveau d’éducation, de la composition de leur ménage, de leurs revenus et de leur contexte culturel ?
- Pourquoi certaines femmes rurales réussissent-elles à aller de l’avant et à devenir des entrepreneuses tandis que d’autres sont prisonnières d’une situation permanente d’insécurité alimentaire et de pauvreté ?
Question 2 : Sommes-nous en train de suivre les bonnes approches et politiques pour réduire les inégalités entre les sexes ?
- Comment peut-on combler les lacunes en matière de politiques ? La plupart des pays ont ratifié des instruments internationaux et régionaux pour protéger et renforcer les droits des femmes. Pourtant, nombreux sont les pays où la réalité est bien différente du cadre politique en matière de genre. Par exemple, les problématiques hommes-femmes ne sont pas traitées dans d’autres cadres politiques, comme les politiques relatives à la sécurité alimentaire et nutritionnelle.
- Pourquoi est-il si difficile de convaincre le secteur privé d’engager les femmes rurales en tant qu’acteurs économiques, quand bien même les résultats positifs d’une telle inclusion ont été avérés ?
- A l’approche de 2020, quelles nouvelles perspectives économiques se dessinent pour les femmes rurales ? Les programmes actuels de renforcement des capacités ciblent-ils les compétences adéquates pour les femmes et les filles rurales ? Comment pouvons-nous les mettre à jour ?
Question 3 : Quelle est la meilleure manière de générer des changements significatifs en matière de genre ?
- Que peut-on faire pour renforcer la voix et le bien-être des femmes au sein de leur ménage et de leur communauté ? Un grand nombre d’initiatives sont axées sur l’autonomisation des femmes, aussi bien dans leur travail que dans leur participation en tant que membres ou dirigeantes à des groupes de producteurs et à des groupes communautaires. Une plus forte autonomisation dans la sphère publique ne se traduit pas forcément par l’amélioration des dynamiques familiales et de la qualité de vie.
- A-t-on accordé suffisamment d’importance à la participation des hommes et des garçons pour modifier positivement les comportements ? Comprennent-ils les liens entre les rôles respectifs des hommes et des femmes et les inégalités, et leurs incidences sur la productivité et le bien-être de leurs ménages ? Leurs besoins sont-ils ignorés, entraînant leur marginalisation et leur désengagement dans le développement du ménage ?
- Quelles approches se sont-elles avérées efficaces pour aborder les sexospécificités, les relations de pouvoir et les institutions sociales profondément enracinées dans le contexte ?
Je vous remercie et j’espère que la discussion sera riche,
Clare Bishop
- Afficher 98 contributions
This is an important discussion in preparation for the CSW in March 2018. On behalf of LANSA (Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia), we had organised an FSN Forum last year (130) on Transforming gender relations in agriculture through women’s empowerment: benefits, challenges and trade-offs for improving nutrition outcomes. We had a very interesting discussion around similar issues and I will not repeat the points that emerged, but do look at the summary report attached.
While the feminisation of agriculture and agricultural labour is recognised in many countries of the world, women are still not adequately supported to perform these roles, their needs and interests not given priority attention within agricultural policies, research and extension services. Recognition of women's economic contributions to agriculture and provision of equal entitlements are central to protecting their rights and helping them overcome disadvantage. Explicit legal recognition as farmers with equal entitlements as men is a precondition to removing inequalities in access to resources and services.
An important issue that has emerged in our research is women's time burdens, especially during peak agricultural seasons, when they end up working close to 14 hours a day, in agriculture and domestic work. As agricultural work needs to be done, given the seasonal nature of work cycles, women's care-work is squeezed, with negative implications for their own health and that of their children. We find a particular trade off between agricultural work and care of the young child, contributing to the persistence of nutritional deprivation intergenerationally.
Apart from ensuring equal productive entitlements, it is therefore also necessary to support women's reproductive and care work. This can be done through public investments to reduce rural women's drudgery by provision of basic infrastructure as well as time and drudgery reducing technologies. Social protection programmes need to pay attention to increasing women's choices, especially with respect to the season work-care time trade-offs. Further, alongside encouraging men to share care responsibilities, states also need to ensure the provision of reliable and good quality facilities for child care and feeding, especially during the peak agricultural seasons. This is because amongst the poorest, men often end up migrating to towns to earn a living, and given their absence from rural areas, cannot share women's work burdens.
Women problem has been the central issue of social and economic field both here and abroad. Women's empowerment is a participatory process, is extended free choice and the ability of an action, it means the right of control and decision-making in all aspects of political, economic, cultural, social and other rights are transferred to those who are denied the right to control the hands of women, to enhance social development resources and the decision and force. Measurement is a controversial content in the study of women’s empowerment. At present, methods for measuring empowerment include Gender Development Index (GDI), Gender Equity Measurement (GEM), quantitative investigation, ethnographic survey, focus group interview and case study.
Agricultural women's empowerment index (WEAI) is by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Oxford poverty and human development project (OPHI) joint development, it is to measure the weight status of Ministry of agriculture the first comprehensive, comprehensive, standard and direct measurement of women. The index consists of two parts, namely, the 5 dimensions of agricultural empowerment (5DE) and the gender difference index (GPI), with weights of 90% and 10% respectively.
According to the construction method of adjusted WEAI, we practiced a program from the "impact assessment of agricultural comprehensive development projects in poor areas of Inner Mongolia" supported by the international agricultural development fund in 2014. The project of data acquisition by household questionnaire structure mainly relates to Inner Mongolia Wulanchabu Chayouqian flag, chayouzhongqi, Chayouhouqi, Siziwangqi, Shangdu County, Huade County, Xinghe County, Liangcheng County, Zhuozi County, a total of 9 counties, a total of 900 households were.According to the research, sample impoverished county women's empowerment index increased from 0.794 in 2008 to 0.835 in 2014, an increase of 11.5%; the proportion of women empowerment is not also declined, falling from 25.3% in 2008 to 20.1% in 2014, down 25.9%. The women's empowerment index decomposition, the lack of control of agricultural production decisions and productive resources are the main factors that leading to women’s empowerment is insufficiency; in addition, the credit ability also affect women's empowerment. The three indicators of the contribution rate has greatly exceeded the weight reached 20%, 20% and 19.7% respectively, which indicates that the weight status in these three aspects of women than the other declined, so the more the need for intervention to improve women's ability and power. We also examine the influence of women's empowerment on food security. The results showed that there was a significant relationship between women's empowerment and food security, that is to say, in the case of other conditions unchanged, the more women’s empowerment, the higher their food security.
Please see the research paper attached [Chinese only].
I would like to build on Peter Mbuchi's comments, which focus on the need to work with both men and women in order to attain gender transformative impacts. My colleague, Talip Kilic, and I have been looking at the impacts of increasing both women's empowerment per se, and of cooperation within the household -- through joint decision-making -- in rural Malawi. We found that greater women's empowerment can lead to increased household income per capita, but that collective action led to much larger increases in household income and consumption per capita as well. Our full results can be found in our working paper here: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/26482. Looking at the literature, we found very little empirical research on how cooperation within the household impacts key welfare outcomes for household members for rural households in developing countries, in fact, we found just one article that found a positive impact of couple's training on the ability of spouse's to reach cooperative outcomes in experimental games settings (Lecoutere and Jassogne, 2016). However, there is a larger literature on family-run businesses in developed countries; this literature often highlights the importance of mechanisms that promote "shared visions" amongst family members in increasing profitability -- a similar argument made by Peter Mbuchi in his comments.
Interestingly, a paper comparing women's empowerment across six countries by Njuki et al. (http://www.care.org/sites/default/files/documents/pathways-global-baseline-report-2013.pdf) finds that though there is absolutely room for increasing women's empowerment in Malawi, women in Malawi tend to be more empowered than their counterparts in all five of the other countries included in that study. This raises the question of whether promoting cooperation in the household is more likely to generate positive results when women's empowerment is also "high enough", or whether promoting cooperation can itself lead to greater women's empowerment.
We expect that household welfare outcomes for all members to be best when there is both women's empowerment per se as well as cooperation amongst family members. It seems like a very good time to include consideration of cooperation within the household in addition to women's empowerment. And, because empirical evidence is scarce, learning from current project approaches -- such as the Family Action Learning System -- as well as generating more evidence from empirical research could lead to real changes in the way we structure projects and policies to address both women as individuals and women as family members, in order to reach transformational changes that improve everyone's welfare.
Cheers,
Nancy
Many measurers are taken by the Government of India to empower women in the household for livelihood security.The ration cards issued to each house hold in Kerala(India) are in the name of eldest women in the house and ration card carries the pass port size photograph of the owner women.There are several incentives to self help women groups.Recently the Cochin Metro opened with a lot of fanfare, women are the piolets and transgenders are given jobs in the metro train.Harassment against women is treated as a non-bailable offence.Despite all these, representation in the powerful assembly and in the state cabinet is abysmally low.At grass root Panchayat level there are legally reserved wards, blocks and Panchayats where women are the elected members/Presidents.There are visible improvement in the literacy levels of women.There are all exclusive women magazines carrying success stories of women in many walks of life.
English translation below
La lutte des femmes rurales pour faire évoluer favorablement les inégalités entre les sexes est une limite rattachée à la lutte contre la pauvreté. Car, la pauvreté est plus rurale et plus féminine aujourd’hui. L’erreur commise à ce jour est de développer des actions d’intervention sans la prise en compte de l’hétérogénéité de la population pauvre (formes de pauvreté). Les pauvres ne sont pas les mêmes. Et pour être efficaces, les actions d’intervention doivent en tenir compte. Ce qui n’est pas encore le cas.
En définitive, les problèmes des femmes sont rattachés aux faits qui font que la pauvreté chronique frappe plus les ménages dirigés par les femmes que les autres. La question n’est pas à mon avis une question d’autonomisation des femmes ; une notion que je n’ai souvent pas aimée, parce que la cohésion des ménages tient à l’interdépendance entre l’homme et son épouse. Il ne s’agit donc pas de renforcer la femme contre son époux, mais surtout de viabiliser davantage les ménages et de sauver les femmes, notamment celles en situation de chefs de ménage. Je tire ces déductions des travaux de thèse que j’ai effectués sur la dynamique de pauvreté. Il s’est dégagé que le taux de pauvreté chronique est beaucoup plus élevé au sein des ménages dirigés par les femmes qu’au sein des ménages dirigés par les hommes : 47,1 % contre 25,7 %. Toute la lutte pour la promotion de la femme pour la réduction des inégalités de genre est une lutte contre la pauvreté chronique. Il s’agit d’une approche technique et fondamentale qui a toujours manqué à ce jour. La pauvreté chronique relève de dispositions structurelles économiques et socioculturelles qui affectent négativement la capacité de production des ménages. C’est alors que je dégageais la nécessité de prendre des mesures structurelles telles que la prise en charge sociale de la santé, la dotation en actifs des ménages et la promotion des femmes chefs de ménage. Un article sur le genre et la pauvreté chronique est disponible en ligne : https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259527591_Genre_et_pauvrete_chronique_en_milieu_rural_au_Benin
The struggle of rural women for a favorable outcome to gender inequalities is a constraint linked to the fight against poverty. For poverty today is more than ever rural and more affecting women. Up until now the mistake committed has been to develop interventions without taking into account the heterogeneous nature of the poor population (different kinds of poverty); the poor are not all the same. And to have any effect the interventions ought to be taking this fact into account, which so far is not the case.
In the final analysis, women's problems are tied to facts that cause chronic poverty to impact more on households headed by women than others. The question is not in my view a question of women's autonomy; a notion that I have never really liked because households are held together by the interdependence between the man and his spouse. It is not therefore about reinforcing the woman against her spouse, but mainly about making the households more viable and coming to the aid of women, in particular those assuming the role of head of the family. I have drawn these conclusions from work carried out in connection with my thesis on the dynamic of poverty. It is clear that the chronic poverty rate is higher in households where a woman is head than in those families where the man is head: 47.1% versus 25.7%. The whole struggle for the promotion of women in order to reduce gender inequalities is really a fight against chronic poverty. It is a question of a technical and fundamental approach which has until now always been missing. Chronic poverty arises from the economic and structural dispositions that negatively affect the productive capacity of households. This is why I have distinguished the need to take structural measures such as accepting the social cost of health care, allocation of assets to households and the promotion of women as heads of families. An article on gender and chronic poverty is available online: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259527591_Genre_et_pauvrete_chronique_en_milieu_rural_au_Benin.
Starting from no or little encouragement from families, improper policies, unequal opportunities, lack of literacy, education, lack of skilling programmes for women and lack of finanacial support, most of the women are trapped in a life of food insecurity and poverty, while only a few rural women manage to move forward and become successful entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurship programmes are focussed mostly on men, while women find them engaged in menial jobs having no potential to turn them into entrepreneurs. The formal participation of women in development oriented meetings are also very limited. Women need- skilling, more formal participation, policies favouring their enhanced role in developmental activities, programmes. From the early age they need mentoring for entrepreneurship and importance of being independent to be able to stand on their own.May be in schools courses are introduced to mentor them on economic independence and value of income generating skills to earn one's own livelihood. The families need also programmes to motivate them to encourgage female members of the households to acquire skills to earn income and have finanacial independence to reduce burden on families. The Finanacial institution should come forward to support skilling programmes for women and helping in setting up ventures by women since women often lack colletrals land titles being not in their names. I find women Dairy Cooperative programme of NDDB in India as one wonderful initiative (http://nddb.coop/services/cooperative/enhancewomen) owards empowering women. Likewise, we need programmes to skill, support, handhold rural women so that they can stand on their own through economic activity undertaken by them. I had once an opportunity to evalauate Women Dairy Cooperatives established under the programme, "Support to Training and Employment Programme for Women (STEP)" of Ministry of women & Child Development in India (http://wcd.nic.in/schemes/support-training-and-employment-programme-women-step). I found it very beneficial for women who could learn skills and empower themselves finanacially and socially. Such programmes implemented in the right spirit can be the real game changer.
Although all projects targeted women according to gender maistreaming policy, still they are facing economic and socail problems; they are illiterate and they dont have finance to create business.
I propose if the projects specify certain component target women only, they will benefit more and let women get more access to the projects opportunities.
Mme Clare Bishop
Feedback from the facilitator of the online discussion
Dear all,
Thank you to the early contributors for getting the discussion off to an interesting start.
The main challenge is to secure a mindset shift which several contributors noted: How to help rural women gain self-respect and understanding of their role (Ekaterine Gurgenidze from Georgia)? How to encourage young girls to know how important they are to society (Byansi Hamidu from Tanzania)? How to overcome the traditional division of work between women and men, with respect to productive tasks (Mahesh Chander from India) and reproductive and care tasks (Marcela Ballara from Chile)? How to move on from the ‘Technical know who’, for example, where the private sector uses men to solve women’s problems, rather than letting women work to solve their own challenges (Byansi Hamidu from Tanzania)?
Several pathways for change have been identified, including:
- The crucial role of education and training (especially for non-agricultural rural work) in empowering women to look for more skilled opportunities (Bertha Yiberla Yenwo from Cameroon, Marcela Ballara from Chile, Mahesh Chander from India, Dr. Amanullah from Pakistan, Byansi Hamidu from Tanzania);
- ICTs – and in particular smart phones with internet access – are also a game changer. As noted in India, social media are challenging social norms and encouraging women to be more assertive even though, at present, girls have less access to phones than boys.
- The feminisation of rural areas, as a result of male outmigration, is enabling women to be recognised as the principal decision-makers and actors in the rural areas (Marcela Ballara from Chile and Kala Koyu from Nepal).
- The growing agribusiness sector could engage more with women, working in groups to make their voice heard and supported by extension services reaching out to women and girls (Byansi Hamidu from Tanzania).
- The importance of an enabling policy environment, such as the Rural Women's Dialogue Table in Chile, which focused on the integration of rural women into economic activity.
But change is not without its challenges. Men can feel uncomfortable when traditional roles are challenged (Mahesh Chander from India) while women left to manage households in areas of male outmigration can be subject to negative public scrutiny and labelling which are degrading and demoralising (Kala Koyu from Nepal).
Working with both men and women can overcome some of this backlash to change and result in gender transformative impacts. The Gender Action Learning System (GALS) encourages men and women to have common visions at household level and to analyse family issues that can hinder the achievement of these visions (Mbuchi Peter from Kenya). Through enabling both women and men to appreciate the benefits of more equitable approaches, the productive potential of the family is unlocked.
Please share more examples of working with men and at household/family level to tackle the more fundamental causes of gender inequality.
Clare
Land tenure is crucial to security and overcoming poverty. In an EGM on women's issues held during the process of consultations contributing to the UN Habitat New Urban Agenda, grassroots women and global experts indentified land tenure as paramount to women's security. The recommendations of this EGM included: Institutionalizing land rights for women; creating and instituting policies prohibiting discrimination against women in owning and renting housing; and adopting policies that protect the disenfranchised from commercial land grabs. Grassroots women in Jamaica, Peru and the Philippines gained secure access to land and created a construction training program of low-cost building practices that provided women with economically viable building skills and improved living environments.(1) Other grassroots women in rural areas have organized into groups to create farming collectives and seed banks for control of distribution of local seeds. Their work is dependent on land security.
Parallel to the development of land tenure security is the establishment of legal frameworks that grant and protect these rights. These legal frameworks must be addressed in conjunction with other laws that affect women, such as marriage and inheritance laws. The security of tenure must be protected from generation to generation. And, women must receive education and guidance about their tenure rights, so that they know their rights and may challenge any obstruction of these rights.
In response to the question from Ekaterine Gurgenidze, "How can we help rural women to help with self respect and understand their significant role in community, family and society?"
There are many grassroots women's groups around the world who are organizing, mapping their communities and proposing solutions to challenges they encounter and must overcome. The Huairou Commission has been working for 20 years to support these women, many rural women, and connect them to share their creative solutions through peer to peer exchanges. Having women empower women with similar circumstances works. Meeting women who have overcome similar challenges is empowering and life changing. I think that all organizations should look to the grassroots for input on programs that supported them in transforming cultural role norms.
1. Pritchett, Regina and Jacqueline Leavitt. June 2012. Women.Cities and Economic Empowerment: Lessons from the Expert Group Meeting, Harvard University Expert Group Meeting.
Hello, I'm from Georgia and want to discuss about one gender topic. During the last 20 years the gender issue is becoming more prioritized and important to our government. But the rural women stay in the same women of development as it was 20 years ago.
I have one question for discussion:
How can we help rural women to help with self respect and understand their significant role in community, family and society?
Cette activité est maintenant terminée. Veuillez contacter [email protected] pour toute information complémentaire.