CSW62 Side-event: Rural Women as actors in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals

Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

Let me start by thanking Her Excellency, Ambassador Beckles, the Permanent Representative of Trinidad and Tobago to the United Nations for the invitation extended to our Organisation to take part in this important event.

Ladies and gentlemen,

• The empowerment of rural women and girls is key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular SDGs 1 and 2, on ending poverty and hunger.

Women are often the backbone of the rural economy, especially in the developing world. If you look at labour alone, women represent on average 43% of the agricultural work force in developing countries.

For rural women and men, land is often the most important household asset to support agricultural production and ensure food security and nutrition.

However, women are significantly disadvantaged relative to men for all dimensions of land tenure: reported land ownership, documented ownership, land management and land-related economic rights.

Globally, for example, less than 15% of all landholders are women.

Numerous studies have shown that women’s land rights are correlated with better outcomes for women and their families, including increased bargaining power in the household, better child nutrition, and higher protection from gender based violence.

Closing the gender gap in agriculture would also generate significant gains for the agriculture sector and for society. If women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by up to 30% and raise the total agricultural output in developing countries by up to 4%.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Goal 5 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recognizes the fundamental role of women in achieving poverty reduction, food security and nutrition and sustainable development goals.

SDG target 5.a aims to undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws.

There are two land related indicators (5.a.1 and 5.a.2)  to measure progress under SDG target 5. The indicators examines the actual situation in a given country in terms of women’s and men’s land rights and tenure security. Indicator 5.a.2 examines the adoption of legal reforms to promote women’s land rights.

As custodian agency, FAO is supporting Members States to monitor progress towards the achievement of this target, through capacity development programmes and awareness creation. For example, FAO has just launched an e-learning programme on Sustainable Development Goals indicators for Member States.

Ladies and gentlemen,

There are several further actions we can undertake to promote gender equality and empowerment of women throughout the SDGs.

We must, for example, eliminate the legal barriers to rural women’s empowerment to ensure that laws guarantee equal rights for women and men to control assets like land and water, and to receive services such as education, extension, credit and emergency assistance.

Furthermore, we must make sure that agricultural policy decisions take women’s voices and perspectives into consideration to pro-actively foster gender equality. Making rural women’s voices heard at all levels of decision-making is crucial in this regard.

We must also strengthen rural organizations and institutions and make them more gender-equitable. Women and men have to be equally served by rural institutions, as women are producers, processors, traders, employees, employers, and above all as rights holders.

And, we must improve the collection, analysis, and use of sex-disaggregated data on agriculture and food security. More detailed data will improve our understanding of the contributions that rural women make and the challenges they face, establish a firmer basis for targeted policy interventions, and enable stakeholders to monitor changes.

All of these actions will serve to promote gender equality and contribute to the achievement of SDGs and the 2030 Agenda. 

However, we must also remember that no single organization or government has the capacity to embark on this work alone.

Partnership involving governments, UN entities, civil society, academia, and the private sector among others are key to strengthening women’s land rights and promoting gender equality. This is why an event like this one here today is so crucial for rural transformation and the empowerment of rural women and girls.

Thank you.