Celebrated on 15 October, the International Day of Rural Women recognizes the crucial role that women and girls play in ensuring the sustainability of rural households and communities, improving rural livelihoods and overall wellbeing. Women account for a substantial proportion of the agricultural labour force, including informal work, and perform the bulk of unpaid care and domestic work within families and households in rural areas.

At the heart of many UN agencies and NGOs work, rural women in Lebanon are attracting greater attention especially in the agri-food sector. This is taking a greater dimension on the ground thanks to international donors, such as the Government of Canada, who have gender equality and the economic empowerment of women high on their agenda.

Within the framework of a Canada-funded project, implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Lebanon (FAO) in coordination with the Ministry of Agriculture, a platform was established to coordinate among all actors targeting women and women groups or cooperatives in rural areas. This platform aims at avoiding duplication, creating synergies and sharpening the impact on the targeted areas. In addition to FAO, the platform encompasses agencies and NGOs such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the World Bank, and Mercy Corps.

Economic empowerment and capacity building of rural women

The FAO project supports 270 women's cooperatives, associations and informal groups through capacity building on gender equality and a number of soft skills like communication, negotiation and ethics. Women are enrolled in Cooperative Business Schools (CBS) where business training modules are provided and where they develop their own business plans with the help of trained CBS facilitators. Around 150 business plans will be selected for further support through cash grants, labor vouchers and linkages to markets. In parallel, the project will develop the capacity of the General Directorate of Cooperatives at the Ministry of Agriculture.

Given the significant contribution of rural women to agriculture and agribusiness value chains, UNDP is supporting through the “Women’s Economic Participation Project”, funded by the Government of Canada,  2600 individual women and 52 women-led cooperatives and small enterprises. The project’s holistic approach will enable women to increase access to and control over income and economic resources, improve their economic independence and wellbeing, build greater safety nets, and amplify their voices to claim women’s economic rights.

These strategies include: providing technical skills, knowledge, and in-kind grant support; building leadership, decision-making, communication and bargaining power at the household and workplace levels; and promoting peer-to-peer psychosocial support and learning, while actively engaging rural women in advocacy and awareness raising efforts to promote changes in social norms that perpetuate gender discrimination and violence.

Through its Canada-funded 3amaly program, Mercy Corps is also supporting women-led MSMEs and start-ups in improving and developing sustainable businesses. Through a partnership between the Union of Municipalities in Iklim Al Toufah, the 3amaly program is providing the General Agricultural Cooperative in Jbaa and 16 women-owned start-ups with tools and equipment, in addition to technical assistance in bread-making and food safety to mitigate the rising unemployment rate among women and the high cost of bread production. Moreover, the 3amaly program is providing essential equipment, tools and technical assistance to the Zaatar Zawtar cooperative in Nabatieh supporting ten women-owned agricultural starts-ups.

In Southern and Northern Lebanon, UNIDO in partnership with the Ministries of Industry and Agriculture is also supporting seven women-headed cooperatives through technology transfer, skills development, product innovation and market access. Funded by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation the UNIDO project focuses on fostering creativity and on supporting income-generating activities of women in rural areas working in the Zaatar value chain. At least 130 jobs are expected to be sustained following these interventions.

UN Women has been working to support women’s cooperatives across Lebanon for the past decade. Also in Southern and Northern Lebanon, UN Women’s support has led to the establishment of five registered women's cooperatives operating under common brands to produce Lebanese products and create local employment. In the south,  UN Women launched the NESWA Lebanonbusiness model  which represents a women-led  social enterprise  that combines competitive business management frameworks, skills upgrading and social innovation in gender-smart solutions to promote women entrepreneurship. This business model established five agro-cooperatives per ISO 22000 in South of Lebanon. In the North, UN Women supported the establishment and institutional capacity of the first women cooperative in Akkar/Khraibet Jundi. The UN Women model promotes and builds domestic production, while creating employment opportunities for women – both Lebanese and Syrian. Currently UN Women continues to support the cooperatives through technical assistance and training on issues of corporate governance, marketing and product standards.

Facilitating market access of rural women through ICT-based solutions

Digital Agriculture technologies have tremendous potential for improving the efficiency, equity and environmental sustainability of food systems. Cognizant of the agri-food sector’s strategic importance for women economic empowerment, job creation, human capital formation and sustainable economic growth, the World Bank Group’s Mashreq Gender Facility (MGF), in collaboration with the National Commission for Lebanese Women (NCLW) and a multitude of stakeholders, are partnering to launch the Lebanese Chapter of the ‘DigitalAG4Mashreq Challenge’. This competition will focus on crowdsourcing innovative ICT-based solutions that facilitate market access and enhance women's economic participation in the agri-food sector in the Mashreq region. In doing so, it will contribute to raising awareness on the gender-related challenges facing the agri-food sector, foster resilience through regional collaboration, and promote innovation by generating private sector activity, powered by youth.