By Grace Ademulegun
Despite their crucial role in the world’s food production, women’s contributions are frequently disregarded.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), women are in charge of half of global food production and produce between 60 percent and 80 percent of the food in several poor nations.
Even still, their vital function in agriculture, especially in smallholder farming systems, has only lately started to receive the acknowledgement it merits.
Despite being essential to providing food security in the home, women encounter many obstacles that impair their general well-being and productivity.
In agriculture, women are essential. They have important roles in food marketing, distribution, and even decision-making, but their main responsibility goes beyond planting and harvesting. The majority of domestic tasks, including childcare, cleaning, fetching water, and cooking, are also performed by women in many areas.
Despite being essential to smallholder farming systems’ operation, these jobs are sometimes disregarded in talks of policy and development.
Despite their participation, women farmers still face several obstacles, especially when it comes to obtaining resources, financing, and land. When it comes to land ownership, women face disadvantages in many nations.
Cultural barriers sometimes cause policies that support equal access to land to fail, and women are typically less likely to own or manage the property they work on.
For instance, more than 90 percent of economically active women work in agriculture in Rwanda, Malawi, and Burkina Faso, but they are frequently limited to unskilled labour and seldom ever have control over the money they earn.
Another instance, in Ethiopia, women are under-represented in trade and export activities despite making up 75 percent of the labour force in smallholder coffee cultivation.
Similarly, due to lack of finance and financial limitations, women continue to have limited access to essential agricultural inputs like machinery, seeds, fertilisers, and pesticides.
Because of this, women frequently work at the subsistence level and have limited or no access to contemporary agricultural technologies, which makes it challenging for them to increase their income or productivity.
Inadequate access to financing is a significant obstacle for female farmers. They engage in seasonal production, and expenses are frequently incurred after revenue is generated.
However, a number of difficulties prevent women from obtaining credit, such as a lack of collateral, high transaction costs, restricted mobility, and sociocultural barriers. Because of this, they find it more difficult to pay for the inputs they need to enhance their farming methods and boost output.
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Further difficulties are brought about by the gendered division of labour in agriculture. In many African civilisations, subsistence crops are regarded as “female crops,” whereas cash crops and export commodities are seen as “male crops.”
Women’s capacity to make money from cash crops is hampered by this division, which also limits their engagement in higher-value agricultural pursuits.
Women’s agency and potential are further limited when they are unable to fully participate in agricultural decision-making due to cultural conventions and financial limitations.
Another major problem is the lack of representation of women in rural policymaking. Men are more likely to be involved in the creation of agricultural policies in many areas since they have higher levels of education.
Women farmers continue to be marginalised and their agricultural potential is underutilised as a result of the absence of female representation in policy-making processes.
The structural and financial constraints of small-scale farming are another factor contributing to the difficulties women encounter in agriculture, in addition to their gender.
Nonetheless, combating hunger and poverty worldwide depends on empowering women farmers. Growth in small-scale agriculture is more effective than growth in other sectors at reducing poverty and hunger, according to studies, and women farmers play a key role in this.
Economic growth, poverty reduction, and agricultural productivity can all be achieved by eliminating gender-based barriers in the sector.
Through gender-inclusive seed production and training programs, the SEEDEQUAL project, for instance, has made progress in reaching more female farmers.
Women now have access to better seed kinds, training in sound agricultural techniques, and a link to the National Agricultural Seed Council for certification thanks to this project.
Consequently, women farmers have demonstrated increased yields and increased self-assurance in their capacity to cultivate and sell crops like cowpea and soybean.
Investing in female farmers is both economically and morally necessary. According to FAO estimates, millions of people might be lifted out of hunger if women had equal access to productive resources as males. This would result in a 20–30% boost in agricultural productivity.
According to a McKinsey analysis, empowering women in agriculture has enormous potential to boost global GDP by $28 trillion by 2025 by reducing the gender gap in the workforce.
Making sure that women farmers have equal access to resources, credit, training, and land rights is essential to achieving these advantages. Food security, livelihoods, and the development of a more sustainable and just agricultural future can all be enhanced by reducing the gender gap in agriculture.
To sum up, women farmers are the foundation of the world’s food production. Their perseverance, commitment, and hard labour are essential to feeding the globe, yet they encounter many challenges that prevent them from succeeding.
In order to build a more economic and food-secure world for everybody, we must acknowledge their contributions, remove the obstacles they encounter, and make investments in their empowerment.
