FAO Deputy Director-General for Knowledge, Maria Helena Semedo, will speak at United Nations Headquarters this week, during a high-level Ministerial breakfast meeting on gender equality in land ownership.

A set of stories that illustrate some of the challenges that rural women farmers face every day, the determined and dynamic ways in which they decide to deal with them, and the ways in which their ingenuity and perseverance lead to greater food security.

Joint FAO-World Bank project aims to enable change through data-gathering, education.

International Women’s Day event at FAO eyes role of gender equality in ending hunger and fostering sustainable food systems

New study argues that to succeed, breed conservation efforts must empower women.

UN Women and the three Rome-based United Nations agencies working on food and agriculture today launched a joint programme to empower poor rural women through economic integration and food security initiatives.

FAO's Director General José Graziano da Silva, the Executive Director of UN Women, Michelle Bachelet, the Executive Director of WFP, Ertharin Cousin, and representatives of IFAD participated in a high-level meeting at the WFP headquarters to discuss a 5-y

The Gender and Land Rights database (GLRD) launches five new country profiles from Central Asia: Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, available in English and Russian.

The G(irls)20 Summit, taking place in Mexico in advance of the G20 meeting, brings together young women, aged 18-20, from G20 countries and the African Union to look at the G20 leaders’ agenda through the lens of the economic empowerment and inclusion of

Creating better opportunities for young women in rural areas was the focus of the UN Rome-based agencies’ -- the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the World Food Programme (WFP) and FAO -- commemoration of International Women’s Day 

Better opportunities for women and girls means leverage in fight against hunger.

"Rural women are active economic agents who could unleash major advancements in hunger eradication and development if they were able to participate equally with men in the agricultural economy,” said FAO Deputy Director-General Ann Tutwiler

The 56th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the principal global policy-making body committed to gender equality and the advancement of women, meets 27 February- 9 March in New York and is this year dedicated to rural women’s empowerment.

FAO today launched the “Men and women in agriculture: closing the gap” website, dedicated to the organization’s latest research and knowledge to close the gender gap in agriculture to achieve food security for all.

The UN launched the International Year of Cooperatives 2012 (IYC) on October 31 at the General Assembly in New York. On this occasion, FAO, IFAD and WFP held a side event on the role of agricultural cooperatives in improving the lives of smallholder men and women.

Gender equality was discussed as a prominent factor of food security at FAO’s celebration of World Food Day 2011 and throughout the 37th session of the United Nations Committee on Global Food Security (CFS), held at headquarters 17-22 October.

FAO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the World Food Programme (WFP) and UN Women convened an Expert Group Meeting from the 20-23 September 2011 in Accra, Ghana to identify strategies and recommendations to enhance the economic

Reforming forest tenure systems and securing forest ownership rights can significantly improve peoples’ livelihoods and enable them to gain income from forest products, said FAO in a newly published guide, Reforming Forest Tenure.

The vital role of women in agriculture and rural development was the theme of the thirty-seventh session of the biennial FAO Governing Conference (25 June-2 July 2011).

Worldwide 215 million children are engaged in child labour, and of these 115 million are involved in what is considered to be hazardous work. Agriculture is the sector where the largest share of child labourers is found - a staggering 60 percent of boys a