Under a 1990 Plan of Action for the Integration of Women in Agriculture and Rural Development, FAO is taking a number of steps to address issues and problems faced by rural women. One of these is education in the context of sustainable agriculture and land use planning. At a Round Table on Women, Population and Environment held in FAO's Regional Office in Bangkok in May, 1994, linkages were clearly established between women, their education or lack of it, population variables, and the environment.
Education is only one component in strategies for poverty alleviation, but the general education of women and girls has been found by the World Bank and others to yield some of the highest returns on investment. Rural girls and women however lag far behind boys and men in education, and in their access to information and extension services. The reorientation of home economics and agriculture curricula in relevant colleges and universities is now receiving priority attention, with a number of consultations having been held in the Region, and guidelines already prepared. That is in the formal sector. In order to reach rural women directly however, FAO is also encouraging improved agricultural extension and information services directly to women farmers. In Asia and the Pacific less than 4 percent of agricultural extension workers are female, yet women farmers outnumber men in many countries. In some countries there are virtually no women officials or functionaries in agriculture, in forestry or in fisheries extension. It is often in these same countries however, that it is most unacceptable for a male to approach a woman with extension advice, even as women are assuming increasing responsibility for agriculture.
The plight of women farmers is exacerbated by the legal, social and physical constraints on their access to various factors of farm and home production. These include property ownership, rights of access to financial services, membership and management of rural organizations, participation in development planning, access to scientific and technological information and control over water supplies to name but a few. In these areas FAO has documented many of the problems in order to draw the attention of member governments to gender biases which limit overall economic growth in rural areas. A 1993 Regional Expert Consultation on Gender Issues in Agricultural and Rural Development Policy cited economic, social, political, environmental and moral imperatives for policy initiatives to increase women's efficiency and effective participation. A number of countries provide dramatic illustration of women's increased productivity on farms and in rural development, when policy changes have lifted barriers and increased their access to productive resources.
Action however is limited by the dearth of accurate data on rural women which hampers the design of remedies to women's work constraints. For the first time in 1990, agricultural census data which is collected every 10 years by FAO, was widely disaggregated by sex as well as including certain specific information on women. This provided many previously obscured insights into the situation of rural women, but serious gaps are found in databases and many statistics are found to be flawed by wrong definitions and concepts when it is time to justify policy and planning initiatives. Over the past several years attempts have been made in four Asian countries to test new tools and methods for measuring women's work in agriculture and rural development, in order to provide more accurate data for policy makers and planners, because there are problems in using data which may have been collected using standard classifications, or when enumerators are not trained to probe for accurate information.
Results of pilot surveys using non-participant observation techniques to assess time use by men and women point to three major gender differences:
· the fragmentation of women's time.
· their longer working day and very limited leisure or personal time.
· their overwhelming responsibility for unpaid domestic and farm work including "cottage industry," in a skewed division of household labour.
These figures point to the need for innovations including technology to address some of the more menial, labour-intensive tasks assigned to women, as well as to effect a fairer division of labour in the home. Women lack economic access even to proven simple, and often cheaply available technologies. Financial and information services to women are insufficient to make these technologies accessible. Women need direct access to relevant information in order to make informed choices, as well as a whole range of financial services which make credit for women a productive investment component, and not a liability or yet another burden of self-sacrifice to meet repayment obligations. They also need training to fill gaps which would help them maintain technological hardware, manage farm, household and other economic activities, and ensure the adoption of sustainable production practices.
A necessary complement to these of course, is financial management training - from bookkeeping and accounting to the whole range of professional and managerial training. Perceived or real lack of management skill is a major barrier to women's access to credit, as well as a glass ceiling on their capacity to leap from cottage industry to medium-scale local operations, and on into larger, corporate institutions. If the scale of poverty among rural women is to be reduced and eventually eliminated, their capacity to add value to their time and to their primary products must be constrained neither by legal and social barriers, nor by their own human capacity for management. Dismantling barriers around access to all the factors of production is therefore essential.
To this end, the role of women in the FAO Plan of Action for People's Participation is relevant. Programmes for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD) have been reviewed with intent to enlist rural women as partners in decision-making and management right from the start i.e. at the identification and formulation stage, in data collection and analysis, and in all mainstream activities.
If rural women are to play an equal role, they must acquire a knowledge base equal to that of rural men. Their "indigenous knowledge" and wisdom must not be lost, but it must be complemented and enriched by relevant scientific and technical information. Their much higher rate of illiteracy and lower economic and social status are major constraints to their acquiring this new knowledge, but women are becoming increasingly assertive in demanding access to new knowledge and skills. The education of women on land tenure systems and their rights to land, water and common property resources for example, are issues which emerge with the dismantling of the various social, economic and political barriers placed around educational and service institutions such as agricultural cooperatives. Women's participation in study tours, training and meetings, decision-making processes, the monitoring and evaluation of progress and in the distribution of benefits also elicit great interest from, and return great benefits to rural women and to their entire families.
Case studies have been published to share successful initiatives for the empowerment and mainstreaming of rural women by such actions' and these have contributed to relevant policy changes by some member governments. Of particular note in these success stories is the enabling environment which policy and planning initiatives at the national level have given to rural women's empowerment when these are translated into programmes at sub-national levels.
Another action which appears to have had a positive impact was the gender awareness and analysis training carried out among FAO professional staff, to equip them with the skills and commitment to respond more positively to women's concerns, and to integrate these in all FAO-supported programmes. FAO has further provided technical support to many Governments to do the same. Such training when backed up by policies which seek to redress gender injustice can effect profound changes which benefit poor women. The impetus given to these actions was set out in the mandate known as the Forward-looking Strategies, the report of the Third World Conference to Review and Appraise Achievements of the I united Nations Decade for Women 1976-85, but this has inevitably been diluted in recent years. The fillip given by preparations for the Fourth World Conference on Women to be held in Beijing next year has allowed national priorities and issues to be brought up and analyzed anew both in the countries, as well as at the Regional and International levels.
Under FAO restructuring, the Women in Agriculture Service has been relocated in a new Department for Sustainable Agriculture. This may be a recognition that gender considerations and women's participation are essential components of sustainability. Time will tell whether it leads to more relevant actions for rural women, but in the end it is people, men and women at the grassroots who can work to close the growing gender gap by ensuring more participation by women in mainstream activities. A facilitating legislative and policy environment of course is necessary to optimise their potential, but the single biggest obstacle to women's participation at all levels today remains a problem of attitudes, stereotypes and limited vision of women's potential. That has nothing to do with sex, but everything to do with gender, and fortunately gender roles can be changed - by you, as much as by me.
