FAO statement at the 67th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women - Interactive Dialogue 'Challenges and opportunities in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of rural women and girls'

Interactive Dialogue 'Challenges and opportunities in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of rural women and girls'

As prepared for delivery

Closing the gender gap in agrifood systems is essential to eradicating hunger, malnutrition, and rural poverty. This is in line with the pledge to “leave no one behind”, which is at the heart of the Sustainable Development Goals. Women form the backbone of rural economies and their contributions are prominent and indispensable in all agricultural subsectors and value chains. However, they have lag behind in accessing resources, knowledge, services and markets.

Digital technologies can help bridge these gaps by delivering a wide range of economic, institutional, environmental, and social benefits. They can help increase rural people’s access to services such as information, advisory, market, business development, social protection, and financial services enabling them to optimize the use of inputs and natural resources. 

However, available statistics show that usage by women in rural areas is particularly low, and for instance the share of Internet users in urban areas is twice as high as in rural areas. Moreover, rural women continue to face many additional systemic and structural barriers to technology access and adoption.  Due to persistent gender-discriminatory social norms and practices, rural women often lack the necessary skills, knowledge, and resources to take full advantage of digital tools, which limits their opportunities for empowerment in all areas. 

It is imperative to ensure inclusive access to digital technologies and education that benefit men and women equally to reduce gender inequalities and unleash rural women’s potential. While digitalization on its own cannot solve all the obstacles that women face as economic and social agents, if introduced properly, digitalization can significantly improve rural women’s ability to act effectively and productively in agrifood systems 

FAO will launch a new Report on the Status of Women in Agrifood Systems on the 13th of April 2023, which will provide the latest data, lessons learned and recommendations for policy and decision makers about gender in agrifood systems. This includes insights to women’s access to digital and other technologies. It reviews and analyzes women’s opportunities and constraints in economic and social processes, while taking stock and assessing progress made in closing a series of gender gaps. The report offers a series of action-oriented policy messages, and catalogues what has worked in closing gender gaps and enhancing women’s empowerment over the past ten years.  

Empowering women and investing in gender equality is intrinsically important for women’s wellbeing, but is also critical for resilient and sustainable agrifood systems and can help lift millions of people out of food insecurity. That is why it is so critical to address gender inequality and work on women’s empowerment in agrifood systems: today and every day.