Women play a significant role in food production and food security on agricultural enterprise. In most parts of rural Nigeria, division of labour within the households is gender specific and according to age. Men and women perform different roles; have unequal decision-making power as well as differences in access to land and control over agricultural productive resources. As a result of these differences, their views, needs, priorities and constraints to improving their productive potentials differ. This affects their various outputs even in agricultural development. Therefore, understanding of gender participation and constraints in food production, processing and marketing among rural farmers in the South Eastern Nigeria is important due to the current threat to food security as a result of the economic recession facing the country and this calls the need to increase and sustain the enterprise among farmers. This will ensure effective allocation of resources for increased and sustainable crop development activities, thereby increasing farming outputs for improved livelihoods for the people. Despite the important roles women play in family farming in Nigeria, they are hardly given any attention in the area of training and/or visitation by extension agents with improved technologies. Banks hardly grant loans to them and are rarely reached with improved seeds, fertilizer and other farm inputs. These conditions have placed the women in a vicious cycle of poverty and are highly disadvantaged in economic empowerment for agricultural development. In the light of this, the work addresses gender disparities among farmers, roles of women in agriculture, challenges of women in agriculture and the panacea for the problems.