Gender
Empowering women and achieving gender equality
FAO works with member states and partners to design and implement gender-equitable laws and policies and gender-transformative programmes. Priority actions include, among others: increasing women’s access to and control over productive resources; developing gender-sensitive value chains; investing in labour-saving technologies; and addressing gender issues in climate change adaptation and resilience building.
Key messages
Closing the gender gap in farm productivity and the wage gap in agrifood system employment would increase global gross domestic product by nearly USD 1 trillion and reduce the number of food-insecure people by 45 million.
If half of small-scale producers benefited from development interventions which focused on empowering women, it would significantly raise the incomes of an additional 58 million people and increase the resilience of an additional 235 million people.
Increasing their empowerment has a positive impact on their wellbeing, agricultural production, food security, diets and the nutrition of children.
This is key to improving the design and effectiveness of programming and policy in terms of gender equality and women’s empowerment.
Inclusive and gender-responsive laws and policies require addressing multiple and intersecting forms of inequalities, and power imbalances in agrifood systems.