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Education and capacity building
Improving women’s and girls’ access to education, training and information to equip them with knowledge and skills to succeed in food systems.
Focus area five covers three distinct areas separately, as follows:
Women’s and girls’ access to formal education. Education, especially for women and girls, is a critical priority for achieving food security, nutrition, and gender equality. Women with more education have higher odds of achieving minimum dietary diversity (MDD-W), indicating better nutritional knowledge and dietary practices (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, 2024). However, across all agrifood systems’ types, except industrial agrifood systems, young women are more likely than young men to remain outside the labour force and not in school (FAO, 2025).
Educated women are more likely to adopt healthy dietary practices, understand nutrition and breastfeeding, and use better farming methods tailored to their environment and culture. Literacy also enhances women’s participation in the labour market, civic life, and decision-making, while informing them of their rights.
However, persistent inequalities, including early marriage, GBV, poverty, and lack of gender-responsive school infrastructure, continue to limit access, especially for Indigenous girls, girls with disabilities, and those in rural or crisis-affected areas. Climate change and shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbate these challenges.
Women’s and girls’ access to extension and advisory services (EAS). Gender-responsive agricultural training and extension services are crucial for building women’s skills, leadership, and productivity, especially among small-scale food producers. At the same time, women remain severely underserved by EAS globally. Women face limited access due to discriminatory social and gender norms and poorly adapted services, as well as a lack of female providers and specialists. They also struggle to access market information and nutrition knowledge, key tools for improving food security, health, and economic opportunity, particularly in rural and Indigenous communities.
Women’s and girls’ access to ICTs-based, digital and innovative technologies. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) and digital technologies can facilitate women’s and girls’ access to education, financial services and agricultural information, and new markets.
ICTs are especially valuable for rural women, enabling digital literacy, market access, and secure transactions. Yet major gender gaps persist, particularly in rural areas and for adolescent girls and young women, due to cost, poor connectivity, low digital skills, and discriminatory social and gender norms. Moreover, evidence from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) reveals that girls gain access to digital technology at an older age and are more supervised or restricted from using computers or mobiles than boys (FAO, 2025). Addressing these barriers – especially the social ones - is essential to ensure ICTs promote gender equality without reinforcing existing inequalities or exposing women and girls to new risks.
Key figures
- In a sample of 20 countries, less than 1% of poor rural women finished secondary education, reflecting how poverty, rural residence, and gender inequality reduce girls’ educational attainment (FAO, 2023).
- In four out of six countries with available data, female-headed households had significantly lower access to EAS compared to male-headed households (FAO, 2023).
- For every 100 male youth aged 15-24 who have digital skills, only 65 female youth do (FAO, 2025).
Ensure inclusive, culturally relevant education for all women and girls through strong legal frameworks.
Adopt and enforce measures to prevent child, early, and forced marriage.
Promote gender-responsive curricula that challenge discriminatory norms and promote gender equality in education.
Remove barriers to girls’ schooling with social protection, safe school infrastructure, and gender-sensitive services to ensure that girls enrol in and complete primary and secondary school education.
Foster literacy programmes for all, integrating them into agriculture and nutrition education.
Tackle harmful gender norms and stereotypes in education and training to promote equality in knowledge access.
Support life skills, leadership, and entrepreneurial training for women and girls, including through South-South Cooperation.
Design EAS that offer knowledge and technical support to improve food security and nutrition outcomes.
Reform EAS to be gender-responsive, inclusive of digital tools, and based on local knowledge and participatory methods.
Invest in inclusive research and EAS, including by recruiting and training female extension agents.
Support EAS organizations in building gender-equal cultures and promoting women into leadership and advisory roles.
Expand safe and affordable digital access for women and girls in underserved areas to reduce the digital gender divide.
Promote digital literacy and remove structural barriers to women’s technology access, tackling norms that exclude them.
Understand how women prefer to learn and access information to better respond to their needs.
Co-design inclusive digital tools with women entrepreneurs to meet their agricultural, economic, and information needs.