About the initiative
Commit to Grow Equality (CGE) is a global initiative to accelerate gender equality and women’s empowerment in agrifood systems through financing, partnerships and action. CGE brings together governments, philanthropy, the private sector, United Nations and other multilateral agencies, civil society organizations and others to commit investments and partnerships to make agrifood systems work better for women.
The initiative was launched by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in March 2024 in response to evidence and findings from FAO's report on The status of women in agrifood systems that highlighted persistent gaps and the urgent need to accelerate progress in advancing gender equality across agrifood systems.
By joining the CGE initiative, partners become part of a global movement to enhance gender equality in agrifood systems through proven, evidence-based approaches. The structure of CGE allows for a wide range of actors to contribute in ways that are tailored to their priorities while advancing collective impact.
Milestones
Objectives
- Raise awareness of the importance of adequate and high-quality financing for gender equality and women’s empowerment for inclusive agrifood systems transformation.
- Leverage unique strengths and common goals to build synergies and partnerships among key stakeholders.
- Generate consensus on a Commitments Matrix for concrete financial and partnership commitments through a structured mechanism.
The status of women in agrifood systems
13/04/2023
The status of women in agrifood systems report uses extensive new data and analyses to provide a comprehensive picture of women’s participation, benefits,...
Key figures
- Globally, 38 percent of working women are employed in agrifood systems (FAO, 2023).
- Closing the gender gap in farm productivity and the wage gap in agrifood system employment would increase the global gross domestic product by 1 percent (or nearly USD 1 trillion) (FAO, 2023).
- Closing gender gaps would reduce global food insecurity by about 2 percent, reducing the number of food-insecure people by 45 million (FAO, 2023).
- If half of small-scale producers benefited from development interventions that focus on empowering women, it would significantly raise the incomes of an additional 58 million people and increase the resilience of an additional 235 million people (FAO, 2023).
- Women earn 82 cents for every dollar earned by men and face a land productivity gap of 24 percent (FAO, 2023).
- Women, and particularly young women, are more likely to lose jobs during economic downturns. For example, during COVID-19, young women's employment in agrifood systems declined by 7 percent, while young men's increased by 3 percent (FAO, 2025).
- Globally, only two-thirds of women aged 15 to 49 years achieve minimum dietary diversity (FAO, 2025).