Montevideo, Uruguay – In its efforts to adapt to climate change impacts, Uruguay has made strong commitments to promoting gender equality in the agriculture sectors. On March 26^th, the Specialized Gender Commission of the Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries of Uruguay (MGAP) organized a roundtable to discuss the role of sex-disaggregated data to improve the adoption of adaptation actions in agriculture. Participants included members of the School of Social Sciences of the Universidad de la República, the Instituto Interamericano de Cooperación (IICA), FAO and UNDP/PNUD.

Dr. Paola Mascheroni from the Universidad de la República presented a gender analysis of data from the Agricultural Census of 2011. The analysis showed that although improvements have been made, there are still gaps that underline gender inequality in agriculture. She noted the existence of biases in women’s access to paid work, high levels of unpaid work and gaps in women's access to land.  Dr. Mascheroni stressed the need to improve the way information is collected in the Agricultural Census to be able to better visualize women´s role in agriculture, in order to improve the design of public policies that can close the gender gap.

Ruth Bernheim presented a study conducted with the support of the NAP-Ag programme to collect data on the intersection of gender and climate variability. The survey was conducted with livestock, dairy and horticultural farmers, and showed that when women are involved in the decision-making process and work at the farm level, more adaptation measures are adopted across all three farm types. Other factors associated with the adoption of adaptation measures at the farm level are participation in farmer organizations and farmer groups. This suggests that strengthening women participation in farmer groups is a way to close the gaps and foster empowerment.

The event was attended by technical officers of various Ministers and agencies that are working on strengthening gender perspectives in public policies.