A United Nations report points out that women in the countryside receive 20% less than men. According to one expert, “equalizing the wages of men and women would end the food insecurity of 45 million people” at $1 billion. However, according to the report The State of Women in Agro-Food Systems, recently published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and which provides an overview of this population over the past decade, still large.
FAO’s study shows that women receive just $0.82 for every dollar paid to male workers in these systems – which include all food production, from planting to handling and distribution.
According to Úrsula Zacarias, FAO’s gender representative in Brazil, this situation has worsened during the pandemic: 22% of women have lost their jobs and only 2% of men.
Furthermore, women are more moderately or severely food insecure, which globally was 1.7 percentage points higher than men in 2019 and the gap reached 4.3 percentage points in 2021.
“Often women only get part-time work because they have children to take care of, as well as not having many training opportunities for access to education, technology, and this affects them drastically,” says Zacarias.
DW Brasil: At least symbolically, the role of women in human history is directly linked to food, both in the preparation and production and in guaranteeing the food. Isn’t it a contradiction that it is precisely women who suffer from the greatest food insecurity?
Úrsula Zacarias: Women have always worked in the fields, in the food systems. But in the course of global transformations, policies, programs and even technologies have adapted to a more masculine world.
For example, today we are able to identify the tractors in agriculture and even the tools used during production that are most suitable for the male biotype. Women have always been in the field, but they have always been made invisible.
Women’s work has always been linked to domestic tasks, but this has always been seen as help, never something recognized, valued and made visible as formal, income-generating work, like the work men do.
What urgently needs to be done to close this gender gap in agri-food systems?
Empowering women at this time in which the world finds itself is essential to achieve economic and social results. The report indicates that the benefits of projects that have empowered women are greater than those that integrate gender alone.
Today, more than half of bilateral agriculture and agricultural development funding already involves women, yet only 6 percent of these ongoing projects treat women as key. [no processo].
We can think of the following: if half of small producers benefited from this type of development, it would significantly increase the income of over 58 million people and increase the resilience [a crises, como a climática ou a pandemia] of 235 million people.
FAO estimates that eliminating this gender gap in agricultural productivity and the wage gap we still find in jobs in the agri-food system would increase global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by almost 1%, or that billion dollars.
With this, we would have a global reduction in food insecurity of about 2 percentage points, which corresponds to 45 million people.
And what are the current obstacles to gender equality in agri-food systems?
Agribusiness systems are major employers of women and an important livelihood in many countries. Globally, 36% of female workers are employed in agri-food systems, mainly in the primary sector. And male strength is 38% of men.
Despite this approximation of numbers, women tend to be marginalized, with worse working conditions.
There are irregularities, and also the work that is done at home, as a caregiver, the social work that they do, none of that is counted. Often women only get part-time jobs because they have children to take care of, as well as not having many training opportunities, access to education, technology, and this drastically affects rural women.
The study also says that women’s food insecurity has increased markedly during the pandemic, including in Latin America and the Caribbean region, where the difference in women’s food insecurity is 11.3 percentage points greater than that of men. What are the causes of this failure?
The report shows that 22% of women outside agriculture lost their jobs in the first year of the pandemic, compared to 2% of men.
We’ve had an increase in food insecurity, violence, especially against women who have started staying home longer, who have become more vulnerable, so all these inequalities hold women back at all levels.
We still have the lack of opportunities for these women to have access to public policies, mainly access to credit and land, because in most countries there is still a culture that land should be named by men.
In the case of Brazil, can we say that there have been changes in the last ten years for this population?
There has been progress. Some countries, mainly in Latin America, have turned to address these challenges, to work on these structural gaps. Here in Brazil it is no different.
It is one of the few countries in the region that has an agricultural census with a specific number, and this work is made visible in FAO’s partnership with Embrapa and the Ministry of Agricultural Development and Family Agriculture, called the “Observatory of rural women in Brazil”, in which we work with this data to find out what the gaps are, the rights they do not have access to, what is really happening in the countryside and what the lives of these women are like.
We also have very successful policies here, such as technical assistance, rural extension, rural women credit. But there is still a lot to improve before they can be included in policies.
What does FAO recommend to governments, in terms of public policies, to reduce this gender inequality in agri-food systems?
Improving resources’ access to credit and technology is an action that needs to be taken as soon as possible. It is also necessary to expand public policies so that women have access to land, own their properties and, therefore, generate income, economic empowerment and improvement of local life.
The issue of equal pay is being debated around the world. Most countries have a law or have it in their constitution. But there are actions that can be stepped up so that we can achieve this long-term goal.
FAO believes that equal pay is one of the most essential means of fighting hunger. It is a more than urgent measure.
Other actions that lead to a significant improvement in women’s lives are social policies, such as having more kindergartens and full-time schools, so that they have more job opportunities, so that they are not always conditioned to take care of children. If we have day care centers that receive a school feeding program, the babies are guaranteed to be fed and nourished and that is already a relief for these moms.
Finally, you need a security guarantee. There is a lot of violence against women, which has intensified during the pandemic. These measures that ensure rights must be more visible, more informed. We need to bring information to as many women and girls as they go through this type of situation.
Source: Terra
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