FAO: gender equality would eliminate hunger for 45 million people

The gender equality in agricultural production would lift 45 million people who find themselves in this situation out of food insecurity and would increase the global gross domestic product (GDP) by 1%, the report highlights today “The situation of women in agri-food systems” of the FAO.

The study, the first carried out by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in this field since 2010, analyzes the situation of women in the agri-food sector worldwide and highlights the serious social and economic inequalities they face.

Thus, world agricultural production is harmed by inequality that impacts women in multiple ways and that generates a vicious circle that negatively affects society as a whole, impoverishing it and reducing its progress.

“There is a 24% negative gender gap in land productivity on farms of the same size managed by women compared to those managed by men”, explained the chief economist of the FAO, Máximo Torero.

Improve women’s rights

Despite the fact that equality would help increase global GDP and reduce the 828 million people who suffer from food insecurity, the gap between men and women in this situation widened from 1.7 percentage points in 2019 to 4.3 percentage points in 2021.

The difficulties that women go through in accessing education, land ownership, agricultural machinery and other essential goods to harvest food in the field in many countries mean that a fundamental part of the labor force in the food chain sees limited its development and production capacity.

“Improving women’s rights to ownership of agricultural land positively influences empowerment, investment, natural resource management, access to services and institutions, resilience and food security, as well as reducing violence and increasing their bargaining power“said Bullfighter.

However, in the last ten years the gender gap in access to knowledge and agricultural technologies, irrigated farms and livestock ownership has practically not been reduced, although the FAO has detected improvements in the use of financial services and telephones. mobile.

Behind the scant progress in terms of equality is hidden, according to the economist, “the lack of policies, on a sufficient scale, aimed at resolving inequalities and eliminating social norms that discriminate against women”.

The most vulnerable in times of uncertainty

Discrimination especially harms the social systems of countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where more than two thirds of women work in the agri-food sector, while men access other types of jobs in a greater proportion.

The report also highlights the special vulnerability of the female population in times of uncertainty and economic crisis, in which they are the first people to suffer from unemployment, poverty and hunger caused by situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and they do so in a much more pronounced way than men.

During the worst moments of the pandemic, 22% of women lost their jobs in the non-farm agri-food system, compared to 2% of men.

In addition, the workload of women as unpaid caregivers for family members increased in the same period and in countries like Honduras, this meant a reduction in the school attendance of many girls, the report highlights.

To face the current accumulation of inequalities, the FAO highlights the need to promote public policies focused on the “empowerment” of women and their equal rights at all levels, also outside the agricultural system.

“Access to, for example, structured childcare services has a large positive effect on the employment of mothers and on the performance of activities related to agri-food systems”, pointed out the chief economist of the FAO.

Source: EFE