Regional Forum: Sustainable and Inclusive Agrifood Systems for the Empowerment of Rural Women

Context

In Latin America and the Caribbean, women represent 36% of the workforce in agrifood systems, playing key roles from production to marketing (FAO, 2025). However, they face inequalities in access to land, water, credit, technology, and training, as well as in participation in decision-making. These challenges are compounded by the burden of unpaid domestic and care work, which further limits their economic autonomy and their labor and political inclusion.

Valuing the knowledge and sustainable practices of rural women is central to biodiversity conservation and resilience, poverty reduction, and achieving food security and nutrition. To this end, it is crucial to invest in comprehensive programs that effectively contribute to closing the gaps rural women face in agrifood value chains.

The 2025–2026 period offers a favorable scenario to place the rural women’s empowerment agenda at the center of regional and global decision-making processes, capitalizing on milestones such as the United Nations’ declaration of the International Year of the Woman Farmer and the 39th FAO Regional Conference (LARC39) in 2026, COP30 on climate change (Belém, Brazil 2025), the Inter-American Decade for the Rights of Rural Women (2024–2034) of the CIM/OAS, as well as the launch of the CFS Voluntary Guidelines on Gender Equality and Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment (GEWE), the Mexico City Consensus on Care Systems, and the CELAC 2030 Food and Nutrition Security Gender Strategy (Plan SAN/CELAC).

Additionally, within the framework of the UNFSS+4, the UN Secretary-General called for ensuring the effective and meaningful participation of all stakeholders in food systems policy processes, highlighting the priority inclusion of family farmers, frontline workers, women, youth, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities as key actors for achieving just and sustainable food systems.

Against this backdrop, the FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean will convene the Regional Forum “Sustainable and Inclusive Agrifood Systems for the Empowerment of Rural Women” on 8–10 October 2025 in Panama City, to commemorate the International Day of Rural Women.

The Forum will bring together rural women, government representatives, international organizations, civil society, academia, and the private sector with the objective of strengthening political dialogue, showcasing experiences, and articulating proposals for a regional agenda that integrates the needs and proposals of rural women in the preparations for the International Year of the Woman Farmer, LARC39, and COP30, and that advances legislation, public policies, and strategic alliances to ensure their economic, social, and political empowerment, as well as their full participation in the sustainable transformation of the region’s agrifood systems.

General Objective

Strengthen the regional agenda for the economic, social, and political empowerment of rural women in Latin America and the Caribbean through a space for dialogue, consensus-building, and exchange of experiences that enables progress in commitments and concrete actions to close gender gaps and advance sustainable and inclusive agrifood systems.

Specific Objectives

Promote agreements for the development of legislation, policies, and programs with a gender-transformative approach in the countries of the region.

Foster an exchange of experiences and good practices among countries and key development actors to generate concrete solutions to the challenges faced by rural women, with special attention to economic empowerment and strengthening care systems.

Build, in a participatory manner, an agenda of needs and key proposals for the empowerment of rural women in the region, including specific recommendations for the International Year of the Woman Farmer, LARC39, the Inter-American Decade for the Rights of All Rural Women, Adolescents, and Girls (2024–2034), and the national UNFSS roadmaps, aligned with the implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines on Gender Equality and Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment (GEWE) in the context of food security and nutrition, and the CELAC SAN Plan.

Prepare a Regional Roadmap for the Empowerment of Rural Women toward 2030, multi-actor and cross-sectoral, to guide the adoption and implementation of public policies and concrete actions at national and regional levels, with specific recommendations addressed to: (i) governments, (ii) the United Nations system and international organizations, including FAO, (iii) rural women’s organizations and civil society, (iv) the private sector, development banks, academia, and research centers; ensuring follow-up and advocacy mechanisms in key political processes up to 2030.

Methodology

To enrich discussions and agreements at the Forum, a discussion paper will be prepared, presenting the main challenges for rural women’s empowerment in the region and offering technical–policy recommendations for overcoming them.

The process will begin with an online preparatory workshop, “Road to the Forum”, on Tuesday, 30 September 2025, with rural women and representatives of their organizations from Latin America and the Caribbean. This three-hour session will enable participants to collectively identify, debate, and prioritize the main needs and proposals around the Forum’s thematic axes, ensuring that delegations arrive at the in-person meeting with common inputs and a shared starting point. The methodology will be designed so that rural women can work in groups, exchange territorial experiences, and collectively build proposals reflecting the diversity of contexts and realities in the region. The outcome will be a baseline document of needs and priority proposals, structured by thematic axis, serving as the initial input for the Latin America and the Caribbean Rural Women’s Empowerment Agenda and the Regional Roadmap toward 2030. The workshop will feature simultaneous interpretation from Spanish into English.

The Regional Forum “Sustainable and Inclusive Agrifood Systems for the Empowerment of Rural Women” will be structured around three thematic axes, providing a comprehensive framework for analysis, knowledge exchange, and proposal formulation. These axes will connect the work, moving from a common diagnosis to the definition of solutions and concrete commitments.

Each axis will be addressed from a triple complementary perspective:

Evidence: Presentation of updated regional studies and statistics to measure gaps and opportunities from a rights-based and gender-transformative approach.

Experience: Showcasing concrete cases, innovative practices, and direct testimonies of rural women and key actors who have driven significant change in territories and value chains.

Analysis: Dialogue panels, discussions, and keynote presentations that, based on evidence and experience, identify priority challenges, synergies, and opportunities for joint action.

To foster participation and collective work, interactive digital tools such as Mentimeter will be used to gather opinions, prioritize proposals, and generate real-time visualizations, as well as artificial intelligence (AI) to systematize contributions, organize information, and support the collaborative drafting of final documents. These tools will make the process more dynamic, inclusive, and efficient, ensuring that all voices are captured and integrated into the conclusions.

The Forum will offer simultaneous interpretation into English and Portuguese, with headsets available for all participants.

Thematic Axes

Axis 1. Rural Women and Agrifood Systems: Progress, Challenges, and Pathways to Equality
This axis will present an updated overview of the situation of rural women in the region’s agrifood systems, integrating their perspectives with evidence from statistics, studies, and regional analyses. The objective is to identify both progress achieved and the challenges that still limit their full participation and the exercise of their rights within the agrifood sector.
It will also address the impact of rural women’s empowerment on sustainable development, food security, and nutrition, highlighting gender-transformative methodologies as key tools for achieving equality. The goal is to generate concrete lines of action to strengthen rural women’s access to resources such as land, water, and markets, as well as to training and innovation processes, promoting sustainability of rural territories and their economic autonomy.

Axis 2. Sustainable and Inclusive Value Chains and Alliances to Promote Decent Work for Rural Women
This axis will highlight experiences that have produced concrete, scalable results in relation to rural women’s empowerment and environmental sustainability, through the exchange of good practices and the use of gender-transformative tools capable of shifting discriminatory social norms and closing structural gaps. Discussions will explore the current and potential performance of value chains such as fisheries and aquaculture for income generation, sustainable livestock production, gastronomy, and crafts.
It will also showcase the achievements of the Rural Women’s Empowerment and Environmental Sustainability Acceleration Programme, as well as the Regional Platform for Rural Women’s Empowerment and the regional campaign Rural Women, Women with Rights.
Additionally, mechanisms will be presented to strengthen the resilience of rural women by recognizing the value of unpaid and care work as a cornerstone of their communities and by promoting shared responsibility as an urgent demand to face economic, social, and environmental challenges in rural areas.

Axis 3. Legislation and Public Policies for Gender Equality in Agrifood Systems
This axis will analyze regional progress in regulatory frameworks and public policies linked to agrifood systems, with an emphasis on gender equality, decent work, and the participation of rural women in decision-making. Pending challenges will also be examined, particularly those related to sustainable and inclusive production, intersectionality, cross-sectoral approaches, and the need to build alliances with non-traditional actors to achieve the 2030 Agenda goals.
Furthermore, the strengthening of rural women’s participation will be promoted through dialogue among them, their organizations, communities, institutions, and other strategic actors. This process seeks to consolidate more inclusive and legitimate regulatory frameworks that recognize diverse voices and contribute to profound transformations in the region’s agrifood systems.