“Cerrando Brechas” [Closing the Gap] Project

Between the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Jalisco, an internal migration route is linked to the work of agricultural day labourers.

This population faces various gaps in access to social protection in the areas of employment, health and education, due to the high mobility, temporary contracts and informal employment that prevail in the sector. This situation largely limits the right to social security systems, health services and education.

There is also a significant gender gap in conditions and pay between men and women doing the same work, as well as an unequal burden of care that falls on women.

In this context, an urgent need for social programmes that specifically address the needs of women agricultural day labourers – who are now also facing the COVID-19 contingency – has been identified.

FAO, ILO and UN Women are working together on the Cerrando Brechas project to identify gaps and good practices in social protection for populations arriving in the state of Jalisco from Oaxaca.

This inter-agency initiative is promoted with the support of the Joint SDG Fund. Dialogues have been held through technical sessions with different sectors to issue recommendations in the context of COVID-19, aimed at decision-makers, employers and people accompanying the day labourer population. A document on the panorama and rights agenda of the agricultural day labourer population in the context of the pandemic was also drafted, and spaces and mechanisms for multi-sectoral articulation for decision-making were promoted.

In Mexico, only 30 percent of women have land rights, so they are more often excluded from government programmes, equipment, infrastructure, credit and training. Fundamental for agricultural support. (falta una parte de la frase?)

Also, only three out of ten women receive a wage for the work they do in the agricultural sector. However, women seasonal agricultural workers face other challenges, such as lower pay compared to men.

FAO, ILO and UN Women “Cerrando Brechas” project has identified three key actions to improve the situation of women agricultural labourers:

1. It is necessary to ensure the availability of data disaggregated by gender, ethnicity and age, as this will enable needs to be targeted and addressed from a gender and intercultural perspective. 
2. There is an urgent need to design and implement programmes for the social and economic inclusion of women agricultural and indigenous day labourers, linking actions with the labour agenda of the agricultural day labourer population for access to extended social protection.
3. It is necessary to manage and provide services for access to information technologies that facilitate communication between the day labourer population, towards their places of origin and other interlocutors in the public, private and social sectors, based on a participatory and inclusive rights agenda.

Ellas Deciden [They Decide]

In Latin America, early and forced marriages and unions have not declined, at least in the last 30 years, and there is no evidence that the necessary investments have been made to reduce them.

The highest number of these marriages and unions occur in rural contexts in the region. In the case of Mexico, a higher rate of this type of unions is observed in Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas – with around 30 percent. The main causes of this type of marriages and unions are: gender-based violence, traditional norms of communities and lack of money in the households.

The 2030 Agenda has made a commitment to eradicate these harmful practices, as stated in Target 5.3 of Goal 5: eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation.

In this context, The Hunger Project Mexico promotes the Ellas Deciden initiative, which works for the integral leadership of all girls, adolescents, young women and women to guarantee their right to participate in local development.

This initiative is based on the belief in the transformative power of girls, adolescents, young women and empowered communities.

In this sense, Comprehensive Sexuality Education and the construction of self-sufficient communities are fundamental elements to put an end to early marriages and unions, domestic and gender-based violence, unplanned pregnancies and the feminisation of rural poverty. 

The Hunger Project Mexico carries out various actions aimed at reducing forced and early marriages and unions.

These include the Community-Led Development School, which has sought to strengthen women's leadership, raise awareness of gender equality, promote mechanisms for participation and develop local advocacy strategies. 

The initiative also promotes rural women's circles, which seek to create a space of mutual trust that allows them to share their needs as women in terms of education, health, sexual and reproductive health, housing, gender-based violence, food, and other important issues. It has also promoted a forum on early and forced marriages and unions, unpaid care work and poverty in rural contexts in Mexico and Latin America, with the aim of producing recommendations on the issue and using this document to influence the UN Women Generation Equality Forum process. 

The initiative has left three crucial lessons for further progress in eradicating harmful practices affecting rural women, youth and girls: 

1. Gender mainstreaming is important, but it is also essential to consider intercultural and youth approaches, as this ensures a response to differentiated realities. 
2. Work to end the harmful practices that deepen the feminisation of poverty must be done not only with women, but also with men, especially children, adolescents and young people, and with communities at large.  
3. There is a need to move away from seeing people as beneficiaries to seeing them as indispensable "partners" in building gender-equal communities and countries. 

Law on Public Policies for Rural Women

In Paraguay, rural women have faced various obstacles to their social and economic development. For a long time, their roles as mothers and wives have been the most important for public institutions, which have only considered women from the domestic sphere. 

However, this situation has been gradually changing so that rural Paraguayan women are also considered in their valuable productive and social role. 

Therefore, the enactment of Law No. 5446/15 on Public Policies for Rural Women was a fundamental milestone for the country, opening an important path towards the affirmation of women as agricultural producers and agents of change in their homes and communities. 

Through this law, 15 institutions related to rural areas have adapted their plans and programmes to include actions for rural women. Since 2016, they have been working together in the Interinstitutional Committee for the Implementation of the Law (CIAL, by its acronym in Spanish).  The law has received a further boost with the adoption of its regulatory decree, which will facilitate its implementation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has become one of the most important issues for the country and for rural women, who have taken on the role of permanent caregivers and teachers for children who do not attend school because of the health situation. In addition, the need to mitigate the reduction in off-farm work has forced them to redouble their efforts to continue producing food. 

Faced with the need to provide answers to the population, the Paraguayan government has coordinated its work with the institutions that serve rural areas, in order to help family economy cope with the situation, while at the same time raising awareness and sensitising them, their families and public officials to the rights of rural women. As a result, the projects or programmes implemented have sought not only to strengthen their economic autonomy and the food security of their families, but also their leadership skills and self-esteem.

Hand in hand with the Law on Public Policies for Rural Women, Paraguay is working to articulate its programmes in rural areas, as a step towards a future with equal opportunities for men and women in the countryside.

One of these programmes is the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock's 50 000 Vegetable Garden Plan, which provides seed kits, inputs, technical assistance, training and monitoring of productive projects throughout the country. Rural women make up 61 percent of the users of this plan. 

For its part, the Ministry of Women's Affairs promotes the “Indigenous Women and the Use of Alternative Technologies” project, which helps rural households to introduce eco-stoves, technologies that reduce cooking smoke, cooking time and the use of firewood. The project also works to strengthen women's capacities in the areas of human rights, gender and interculturality. 

Besides, the Ministry of Social Development is developing two major cash transfer programmes: the Tekopora [Better Living] programme and the Tenondera [Moving Forward] programme. This is a strategy to combat intergenerational poverty, benefiting more than 170 000 families. Of these, 80 percent are rural women. Due to the pandemic, the programme increased transfers to families in June.

For its part, the Ministry of Finance has implemented the Pytyvo [Aid] programme to provide financial assistance to people who are not covered by any other social assistance or social security programme. 

In addition, the Office of the First Lady has supported food support programmes for nearly 197 000 people providing lunches, food kits and hygiene items. A national network of health volunteers was also launched, with more than 4 000 people in the sector responding positively.

All of this while developing other annual programmes: support for nearly 10 000 women who have received tools to start their own businesses through the Kuña Katypyry [Empowered Women] credit line; the Aikuua [I Know] income generation and training programme; and the Victoria Project, with provides free breast reconstruction for women who have had mastectomies due to cancer.

The implementation of coordinated programmes and actions, within the framework of the Law on Public Policies for Rural Women, has allowed the Paraguayan Government to identify some lessons learned in order to continue promoting the transformative power of women:

1. When projects have a gender perspective, women not only develop practical skills of productive entrepreneurship, but also acquire a fundamentally new attitude to life, discovering themselves and valuing themselves.
2. When women are empowered and know their rights, they are more aware and may be less vulnerable to gender-based violence.
3. Favourable public policies for rural women facilitate and pave the way for institutions to adapt their processes and mechanisms, thereby improving access to their institutional services. 

“Finanzas Rurales y Ambiente” [Rural Finance and Environment] Programme

In the Dominican Republic, poverty and vulnerability continue to be major challenges, affecting women in particular. In this context, initiatives are needed to enable women to move forward with their entrepreneurial projects in order to transform the reality of their families and communities. 

This is the rationale behind the Rural Finance and Environment Programme implemented by Banco Adopem, a Dominican subsidiary of the BBVA Microfinance Foundation, in collaboration with the IDB's Multilateral Investment Fund, UN Environment, the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA, by its acronym in Spanish), ADA Microfinance and the Central American and Caribbean Microfinance Network (REDCAMIF).

The programme is based on promoting the livelihoods of the economically marginalised population in rural areas, with a focus on microcredit. Women heads of households are an important part of the target group.

In this way, the challenge of designing, testing, validating and scaling up financial services that traditional financial institutions consider risky and that close the door to women's entrepreneurial dreams has been met.

Through this programme, financial services such as Eco-Crédito ADOPEM and Agro-Mujer ADOPEM, which have a strong environmental and gender focus, have been designed, validated and tested.

Eco-credit has provided efficient and rapid support to small producers who want to make productive investments to improve the environmental conditions of their farms or to adapt to climate change.

The Agro-Mujer product, on the other hand, was developed in response to the existence of a population of rural women, who generally do not have access to financing for their businesses.

The Rural Finance and Environment Programme has contributed to increasing the social and economic resilience of rural populations. It has promoted the reduction of risks associated with climatic events in productive activities and the protection, restoration or sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystems, in addition to the short-term positive contribution to people's economies. 

The programme has been extended throughout the Dominican Republic. With the support of the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), ADA Microfinance, the Central American and Caribbean Microfinance Network (REDCAMIF) and UN Environment, more than 850 green loans have been granted, in addition to 8 800 agricultural loans. 

The BBVA Microfinance Foundation identifies three key lessons from this programme: 

1. As of 31 August, women accounted for 41 percent of the green portfolio. This is almost four times higher than the performance of the rural portfolio at the national level, which ranges between 8 and 10 percent. It is therefore possible to speak of a real financial inclusion of rural women.
2. Rural loans granted to women are mostly linked to value-added or commercial enterprises, which are more beneficial to women entrepreneurs.
3. Women tend to be more compliant with repayments than men, thus building a better credit history.
    Access to financial services not only opens doors for women to improve their livelihoods, but also drives real transformation in their families and communities. 

National Plan for Gender in Agricultural Public Policy

In Uruguay, rural and agricultural women face inequalities in access to land, productive resources and technical assistance, as well as horizontal segregation in technical agricultural training. This has led to a process of masculinisation of the agricultural world, reducing women's economic autonomy in the sector.

At the same time, the country's public agricultural and livestock institutions often operate in the rural and agricultural environment without integrating a gender perspective into their actions. As a result, agricultural policies do not reduce gender inequalities and sometimes even exacerbate them.

In this context, the Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries is leading the National Plan for Gender in Agricultural Policies. This initiative is being implemented in partnership with FAO and other public institutions in the agricultural sector.

This plan aims to transform the approach to public agricultural policies to include a gender perspective in a planned, feasible and effective way, with concrete impacts. 

To build this initiative, a national process of citizen, technical and academic consultations is being promoted, as well as the construction of a relevant and viable roadmap with the possibility of impacting on the living conditions of women in the sector.

Among the actions foreseen in the plan are gender sensitisation of officials in public agricultural institutions, and a systematized and agreed diagnosis of the living conditions of rural and agricultural women, for mass dissemination.

The result will be a five-year strategy for mainstreaming a gender perspective into the policies of the country's public agricultural institutions.

The Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries of Uruguay, together with the public institutions that serve the country's agricultural sector, has proposed to integrate a gender perspective into its agricultural policies in order to accelerate the pace of women's empowerment in agriculture.

This action plan is built on three fundamental premises:

1. Rural women play an important role in the economy and production, and have many points of contact with public policies. This means that a gender work policy in its productive dimension must be constructed jointly by all the institutions of the sector. 
2. Women's productive potential is underestimated and undervalued. Defending their role can improve their working, social and productive situation, fulfil the objectives of agricultural institutions and contribute to social justice.
3. To ensure the relevance and feasibility of a public policy, it is necessary to establish a close link with the target population and policy implementers from design to evaluation. 

Honduras has implemented several programmes aimed at breaking the cycle of urban and rural poverty. One of them is the Bono 10 Mil [10 Thousand Bonus]. 

This conditional cash transfer programme targets households in poverty and extreme poverty. Most of them in rural areas, with children under 14 years of age.

In order to receive the annual support of 10 000 HNL (Honduran currency), families undertake to send their children to school and to medical appointments.

Monitoring and evaluation reports estimate that the programme has reached about 40 percent of extremely poor households and 38 percent of poor rural households.

This programme is a major contributor to the food security of poor rural households, particularly those headed by women.  

Trajectories and aspirations of rural young people

In 2019, RIMISP conducted a study in Colombia to understand the trajectories and aspirations of rural youth, the role of territory and public policies in them from their contribution to the reduction of constraints to their economic inclusion. This study analyses the obstacles and constraints faced by rural youth in the transition from childhood to adulthood, the individual and collective strategies they develop to overcome them, and the influence of gender systems.

Young people in rural area are at the heart of the territorial development agenda. Youth is a critical period in which autonomy is consolidated and some key transitions take place, such as access to education, the world of work and parenthood. These define aspirations and life trajectories. Moreover, today's rural youth are potential agents of change. They have higher levels of education, better access to information and basic public services, greater proximity to and use of new information technologies than previous generations.

Among the results, three territorial inequalities stand out that recur in the trajectories of rural youth: schooling and training, and the development of the social protection system. In addition, rural transformations lead to precarious opportunities for rural youth, but also to a wider horizon of activities and places. This leads to high occupational and geographical mobility and a non-linear transition from childhood to adulthood. It is necessary to bear in mind that this generates high levels of uncertainty and anxiety.

Digital strategy to bring financial services to rural women

Bancamía, a Colombian subsidiary of the BBVA Microfinance Foundation, supports vulnerable entrepreneurs in their progress and works to provide them with access to financial resources. This is especially true for those in rural areas. 

To achieve this goal, Bancamía is constantly developing its digital strategy: technology is the great ally in the fight against financial exclusion and inequality. 

Therefore, mobility tools were implemented throughout the network, enabling executive staff to bring their offices closer to customers' homes. 

Technology and channel strategy are helping to make this a reality. By June 2020, the entity had served more than 323 000 vulnerable entrepreneurs through its 217 offices and service points.

In the first half of the year, the institution supported174 000 credit clients, helping them to improve their quality of life and that of their families. Rural women account for 29 percent of the microentrepreneurs served by Bancamía. Eighty-five percent are mothers. 

Spinning stories at the end of the world

In the province of Tierra del Fuego, a group of women spin and weave sheep's wool. For nine years, they have been working together to create a market where they can sell their products under the values of fair trade and respect for the environment. They have already managed to equip themselves and make their first collective purchases of raw wool.

They transform local raw materials in an artisanal way, creating garments that reflect the territory in which they are made. Each spinner has her own story, coming from different latitudes and countries. They are united by their love of wool and a common project. 

Along the way, they meet, talk, share knowledge, support each other, regain values, motivate each other, discuss, sometimes leave angry, come back, give each other another chance, grow, become empowered.

INTA, through its project Sujetos Sociales Agrarios en Procesos de Transformación Territorial [Agrarian Social Subjects in Processes of Territorial Transformation], has worked on an audiovisual proposal to make visible the importance of these groups of collaboration and cooperation. Where processes are built that overcome social logics, gender, distance and age. 

The group also worked on training within the group, linked to textile design or other needs identified by the group. There was also a very strong link with the community, creating training spaces provided by the spinners themselves in order to share their knowledge and experience. 

INTA highlights three important lessons from its work with a group of women sheep wool spinners and weavers in Tierra del Fuego Province:

What began as part of a group of women spinners and weavers has crossed age and gender barriers in the talks and training they have given. These have been held in schools, fairs and other venues promoted by INTA.

The women in this group are recognized as leaders and are called upon by local and regional organisations to be speakers and representatives of Tierra del Fuego.

The group has managed to have its own space where its garments are marketed, and also, thanks to special Pro-Huerta projects (2018), it has also been able to acquire equipment for spinning and carding the wool that the women manage in different ranches and production facilities in Tierra del Fuego.

Through the production of handmade textiles, the women of these communities maintain their role as heirs, creators and transmitters of ancestral knowledge, which translates into aesthetic manifestations and worldviews. These are embodied in the utilitarian objects they produce. 

Their work is often undervalued by the local market, both in terms of the prices offered and the lack of knowledge of the complexity of the process and the meanings of the forms that are repeated and reinterpreted. However, there is a market in other provinces and countries that values their work, both for the vegetable raw material and for the techniques used.

Tatiana Pereyra is a Wichí artisan who participates in a weaving group in Salta Province.

Based on the diagnosis carried out by the local INTA team and the Secretariat of Family Farming, her group began to work on strengthening commercialisation, focusing on developing innovations in design, value addition and associative commercialisation. 

This group of craftswomen, called Thañí [from the bush], has become the only space for local participation exclusively for women. Its members have managed to position themselves as workers in a new way of relating to their environment, revaluing their ancestral knowledge. The group is about to open an online shop to continue marketing their products.

Making visible the role and knowledge of women in transhumant pastoralism

The women and men who practice transhumant pastoralism are located in a vast region: north, west and south of Mendoza; southwest of La Pampa and north of Neuquén.

These men and women, also known as crianceros and crianceras, are part of a movement conditioned by climatic conditions that have a direct impact on livestock farming. This is particularly the case with goats, forcing families to use different pastures and ecological zones.

The crianceras and crianceros clearly demarcate two socio-cultural spaces: wintering and summering. This strong relationship with the environment has generated a wealth of knowledge that forms part of their cultural heritage, which INTA has proposed to rescue and make visible. 

Transhumant women participate in 80 percent of the productive projects presented by the Movimiento Puesteros del Sur, part of the National Rural and Indigenous Movement.

INTA has carried out audiovisual productions in various formats in order to make the role of transhumant women more visible. It has promoted their participation in radio programmes that reach rural transhumant communities in the south of Mendoza and the north of Neuquén.

Priority has also been given to productive projects led by women from transhumant communities in the region.

In 2019, a shelter was created in the city of Malargue to help women during the last days of labour and the first days after giving birth, as the size of the area makes it very difficult for most women to travel from their places of work to give birth.

INTA Platform on Gender, Childhood and Adolescence

INTA has a long history of working with women in agriculture and livestock farming, with children and adolescents in school.  In addition, the number of women in the institution has increased over the last two decades.

However, it was noted that there is a need to strengthen and improve its capacity in terms of gender perspective, as well as to address children and youth issues in a cross-cutting manner in all areas of the institution. 

Women are key actors in Argentina's agricultural and agro-industrial system. They play a triple role in their territories: productive, reproductive and social. 

In this context, the Gender, Childhood and Adolescence Platform was created with the aim of disseminating and addressing these issues, as well as promoting collective action in coordination with institutions and public/private entities.

Since its implementation at the end of 2019, the platform has consolidated an interdisciplinary management team made up of women from the social and agricultural sciences. They are in charge of implementing the three commissions that make up the platform: a) Institutional Strengthening; b) Gender Equity; and c) Children and Youth. The discussion on the situation of rural women has been promoted within INTA's technical teams.

The actions of this platform have been achieved through strong institutional articulation with: the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity; the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries; international organisations such as ILO, FAO and IICA; universities throughout the country, and also with political and social movements that have incorporated the area of gender and diversity within their organisations.

The platform is integrated by an ad-hoc Commission that organized the First Plurinational Seminar of Rural, Agricultural and Indigenous Women, in collaboration with the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity. It consisted of several days of women's participation and closed its cycle on 15 October 2020.

During its implementation time, the platform identified important lessons. Some of these are:

Rural women have a decisive role in development, food security and poverty eradication and must be considered in all their dimensions.

In the context of social isolation, government action seeks to articulate and make visible the efforts of the various social actors in order to provide comprehensive responses with active gender policies.

There is an institutional challenge in INTA, which is to transcend the male-female dichotomy, in which certain roles and functions are assigned to each, leaving aside a diversity of identities that lie between these two positions. 

Mesa de Mujeres en la Pesca Artesanal

Chile's National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service is promoting a Roundtable of Women in Artisanal Fisheries, a space for dialogue with women fishers, shellfish and seaweed harvesters, and fish processors from all over Chile.

This roundtable seeks to strengthen the recognition of the role of women in artisanal fisheries, as well as to develop training programmes, such as the Course for Women Leaders in Artisanal Fisheries, where participants can improve their leadership and management skills.

SERNAPESCA hopes that this space for dialogue will encourage the productive development of fisherwomen and promote better public-public coordination to effectively manage concrete actions in favour of women in small-scale fishing.

The second meeting of this roundtable took place in August 2020 and was attended by almost 50 women leaders from the artisanal sector. They focused on issues related to the visibility and empowerment of women in the fisheries sector in the context of COVID-19. 

National Agricultural Innovation Programme

The National Agricultural Innovation Programme of the Peruvian Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, funded by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, and implemented by the National Institute for Agricultural Innovation, seeks to promote the development of productive, inclusive and sustainable agriculture. The aim is to improve the competitiveness and profitability of small and medium-sized agricultural producers. 

In this way, the project promoted the empowerment of rural women by providing support and advice to women producers and their organisations. 

Reducing the vulnerability of rural women and their livelihoods for resilient agriculture

There are significant gender gaps in Peru that prevent rural women from achieving full autonomy. For example, out of a total of 691 921 women producers, women manage 22.6 percent (3.1 million hectares) of the total agricultural area.

In addition, 26.6 percent of women producers cannot read or write, only 3.2 percent have received technical assistance or training, and only 6.4 percent have access to credit.

in this context, FAO, the Peruvian Government institutions and the Spanish Cooperation are promoting a project to reduce the vulnerability of rural women and their livelihoods for resilient agriculture.

This project works in three important areas: public policy, gender-focused field schools and women-led bio-businesses.

In this way, the gender approach has been incorporated into the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation's budget programme for Technical Assistance and Rural Extension. 

The budget target for the Municipal Incentive Programme with a gender focus has been influenced, and agroclimatic and vulnerability assessments of rural women have been carried out.

Field schools have enabled the training and certification of women. Likewise, their economic and social empowerment has been promoted, making visible the importance of generating positive environmental impacts.

FAO has identified three key actions to boost the empowerment of rural women working in agriculture:

1. Conduct gender training for all field facilitators.
2. Mainstream gender into all phases of the project or intervention.
3. Work hand in hand with specialized gender institutions.