Dr. Parveen Kumar
This year the ‘International Day of Rural Women’ is being celebrated with the theme ‘Rural Empowerment: Global Impact’. The theme highlights the role and necessity of empowering rural women to enable them to contribute economically as well as socially to have an overall global impact. Empowering this populace has the potential to boost global GDP, improve food security and lead to more sustainable and resilient communities. Conversely, the unequal access to resources and opportunities widen the gender gap, leads to disempowerment of the fairer sex ultimately affecting the GDP of countries. Various research studies have revealed that closing the gender gap in farm productivity and food system employment could increase global GDP by nearly $ 1 trillion. If the women had same access to resources as men, global farm yields could increase by 20-30% potentially feeding an additional 100 to 150 million peoples. Similarly projects targeting women have shown significant improvements in incomes and household diets. Besides empowering rural women increases their decision making power within their households and communities. It is a direct path to gender equality and is essential for eradicating poverty.
The International Day of Rural Women celebrated on Oct. 15 every year recognizes the critical role and contribution of rural women, including indigenous women, in enhancing agricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty. Rural women and girls are leaders in agriculture, food security and nutrition, land, managing natural resource management and unpaid and domestic care work. They are at the frontline at a time when natural resources and agriculture are threatened. Their contribution to the agriculture sector is immense. In fact, globally, one in three employed women works in agriculture. From agriculture to food security, nutrition, land and natural resource management, domestic care and work, rural women are at the forefront and are taking charge by being in the driver’s seat. Yet, the hard fact is that rural women are laboring under acutely disadvantageous conditions. Already insufficient infrastructure and services in rural areas have been stretched to the limit; rural women’s invaluable care and productive work during the pandemic has burgeoned, in many places without clean and safe water, sanitation and hygiene, energy supply or healthcare services. This pandemic has also heightened the vulnerability of rural women’s rights to land and resources Women also collect biomass fuels, manually process food materials, and pump water; eighty percent of households without piped water rely on women and girls for water collection. Despite so much of contribution to the agriculture sector, women farmers’ typically achieve yields 20-30% less than men due to unequal access to productive resources and services. Studies reveal that closing this gender gap could reduce the number of malnourished people by 12-17%. Gender inequity plays a special role within agriculture as women are often pivotal to ensure household food security. Yet, they are often not given access to resources and have little decision-making power. In order to give them a voice, to raise awareness of rural women’s participation in the development process with a focus on their needs and rights, highlighting their contributions to sustainable development, household food security, safeguarding traditional knowledge, biodiversity, and peace building and so much more, a day has been dedicated to these invisible partners of growth. The International Day for Rural Women celebrated every year on Oct. 15 serves a platform for all these activities.
The International Day of Rural Women was created in 1995 by civil society organizations at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing and was declared an official UN Day in 2007 by the UN General Assembly vide its resolution 62/136 of December 18, 2007 to recognize the critical role and contribution of rural women including indigenous women in enhancing agricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty. On the International Day of Rural Women, UN Women calls for action to support rural women and girls and grow their capacities to respond to climate change through agricultural production, food security, and natural resources management. Mobilizing relevant Non Government Organizations and grassroots women’s groups, organizations, networks and international institutions, as well as the media, to commemorate the Day and celebrate Rural Women Leaders and their communities around the world.
Every year the day is celebrated with a different theme. This year on International Day of Rural Women the theme is ‘Rural Empowerment: Global Impact’. Rural women have suffered a lot particularly in the aftermath of COVID-19. Moreover climate change also has adverse effects more on the women than men. Building rural women’s resilience in the aftermath of COVID-19′, also calls for strengthening rural women’s sustainable livelihoods and wellbeing. Women have been at the front lines of responding to the pandemic even as their unpaid care and domestic work increased under lockdowns, mobility restricted, supply chains disrupted, and climate and conflict crises compound COVID-19 impacts. In India, rural women can be mobilized by organizing them in self-help groups can be linked to banks which can provide credit facilities. With the finance available from the Banks, the rural women can set up their own income generating units. Government has started so many skill development programmes for rural women including farm women. After updating their skills and getting proper training, they can establish their own business units and provide employment to many others also. Many young girls with rural background have already proved themselves in various fields. Even in agriculture and allied sectors there are 50 different type of activities where interested women can start their units.
The progress towards achieving gender equality and empowerment of women has been slow. Discriminatory gender norms and practices impede women’s exercise of land and property rights in most countries. Since women’s land rights are often dependent on their husbands, COVID-19 widows risk disinheritance. Women’s land tenure security is also threatened as unemployed migrants return to rural communities, increasing pressure on land and resources and exacerbating gender gaps in agriculture and food security. There is an urgent need for gender-responsive investments to expand basic infrastructure, healthcare and care services in rural areas have never been more critical. Bolstering women’s land rights in law and practice can help protect women from displacement and losing their sources of livelihood. This International Day of Rural Women is a key moment to galvanize action by all stakeholders to support rural women and girls to not only rebuild their lives, but increase their resilience to be better prepared to face future crises. The world needs to commit to gender equality while designing various developmental policies and programmes. Improving equity will allow both men and women to have a say in how resources are used. It will also help decision makers to guarantee policies, promote fair access to agriculture and natural resources. Gender, poverty, and institutions are therefore interlinked, and cannot be dealt with independently. We have to identify where, when and how women can gain equitable access to water, land and other natural resources. Our goal of sustainable agriculture rests on the premise that enhancing the decision-making power of women over natural resources can improve agriculture production, enable household food security and ensure long-term benefits.
On this day, let us join the global community in celebrating International Day of Rural Women and advocate for pro rural women policies that lead to their empowerment and build a world where rural women have equal access to resources and opportunities, their rights are respected, and their contributions are valued are recognized all across the globe.
(The author writes on agriculture and social issues)