by Dr. L. El-Fattal
Introduction
1. Food security in the near east region
2. Women's roles in food production and food security
3 Constraints faced by women farmers
4 Conclusions and recommendations in an evolving landscape
References
The purpose of this chapter is to provide the most recent and available evidence on the status of rural women in food production and their contributions to food security in the Near East region. It also explores ways in which women's roles can be enhanced and strengthened through policies and programmes, in light of the constraints that rural women face as key productive agents in agriculture. The ultimate goal is to obtain a firm commitment from governments and the international community to improve the conditions of rural women by addressing the root causes of persistent poverty and food insecurity among rural women and the families they support.
Sudanese woman uses a traditional charcoal stove
This chapter will show that women in the Near East shoulder a large share of the responsibility for achieving food security at the household level. In this region, women grow a substantial portion of the household's food requirements, generate household income to purchase food by providing cheap agricultural and/or non-agricultural labour and perform time-consuming tasks to achieve nutritional security for all household members. Women are mainly involved in food and animal production, but also contribute significantly to the agricultural labour force and to the day-to-day subsistence of the farming household. At the same time, women suffer from persistent poverty and rapid environmental degradation. They have limited access to productive inputs and resources, and their heavy workloads are often unremunerated or underpaid. The last section of the chapter provides recommendations to enhance women's contributions to food security, mainly through measures that seek to include women as full partners in efforts to achieve equitable and sustainable food security.
1.1 The near east region: a brief overview
1.2 Food security indicators
In the Near East region the role of rural women in food security is mainly concentrated at the household and individual levels. At these levels, food security can be defined as the ability of all household members to secure enough food to ensure adequate dietary intake for each member of the household at all times in order to lead an active and healthy life. While food security at the national level is a crucial factor in achieving overall food security, adequate access to food supplies at the individual and household levels is the ultimate measure of success of any food security strategy. Indeed, in some developing countries, large segments of the population go hungry in spite of a surplus of food supplies at the national level.
Food insecurity is a relatively complex issue which, when broken down into its various components, includes famine, hunger, energy deficiency, micronutrient deficiency and nutrient depleting illnesses (Antonsson-Ogle, 1995). Consequently, the essential elements of food security include availability of adequate food supplies, access to sufficient food, and the ability to acquire it. From this perspective, the contributions of women to food security can be divided into the following components: 1) women's roles in household nutrition security; 2) women's production of food for household consumption; and 3) women's earning of income to purchase food.
Before discussing in detail how women contribute to household food security and the constraints that they face as food producers and providers, the following section gives an overview of regional trends in agriculture and food production, highlighting the factors that affect women's roles in food security. The section will show that, although the region fares relatively well with regard to food security compared to other developing regions in the world, it fares relatively poorly with respect to gender issues, especially regarding rural women.
The Near East region is predominantly arid or semi-arid, and agriculture is primarily rainfed. Temperatures are often extreme and rainfall is both scarce and variable from one season to the next. In 1991, only 7.3 per cent of the land in the region was considered arable (FAO/RNE, 1995b). Today, many countries of the Near East region are classified as water-scarce (Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Algeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen). By the year 2025, Egypt, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Morocco, Oman and the Syrian Arab Republic are expected to be added to the list (FAO, 1995a:43).
Land and water resources have been negatively affected by overgrazing, desertification, deforestation, erosion, waterlogging, salinization, urbanization, industrialization and the effects of political instability, war and civil strife (FAO/RNE, 1995b). As a result, there is very little potential in the region to expand its cultivated lands. Thus, major efforts must be directed at boosting yields and increasing cropping intensities.
The region is characterized by one of the highest population growth rates in the world, averaging 2.9 per cent during the 1981 to 1992 period, and projected to be still relatively high, at 2.3 percent, between 2000 and 2010 (FAO/RNE, 1995b). Rapid urbanization is also occurring as a result of rural-urban migration. The main push factors are the lack of jobs resulting from an increasing population that cannot be absorbed in agriculture alone, coupled with low wages and the nature of agriculture itself. A high portion of migration is temporary, whereby male members of rural households seek employment for part of the year elsewhere, leaving behind the women, children and elderly to do the remaining agricultural work. Moreover, the average annual growth rate of food production increased by only 2.2 percent in the last three decades, compared to an increase in food demand that exceeds 5 percent. This led to an increase in the dependence on costly food imports from outside the region, which mounted to 44.3 million tonnes in 1988/90 in comparison with 8.1 million tonnes in 1969/1970 (FAO/RNEA, 1994). The self-sufficiency ratio (SSR) for major food commodities, in turn, decreased remarkably during these decades. For cereals, SSR decreased from 98 to 70 percent, for wheat from 80 to 68 percent, for rice from 108 to 86 percent, for sugar from 75 to 62 percent and for meat from 99 to 85 percent (FAO/RNEA, 1994:3).
It is clear that improving food production in the region will have to be directed at increasing agricultural production per unit of land (i.e. yields), rather than by expansion, since all available arable land is already being used in agriculture. Increasing food production is possible only with the application of sound and sustainable agricultural technology, in addition to creating a well trained and productive human resource base.
One untapped source for increasing agricultural productivity lies in encouraging poorer and more marginalized farmers, especially women farmers, in sustainable and more productive agriculture (Quisumbing et al., 1995). In the Near East, the majority of farms are small (10 hectares or less) and occupy about 25 percent of all arable land (Tully, 1992). Thus, development efforts that concentrate on increasing food production on these types of farms have the potential to alleviate rural poverty and improve the general welfare of their occupants, as well as contributing to food security at both household and national levels.
Figure 1 (Per caput calorie availability Near East region)
Source: FAOSTAT 1994. Note: Although the Near East region as a whole shows impressive improvements in per caput food supply overtime, several countries in the region have, in fact, registered a decline. These are Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and the Sudan.
The Near East region has seen enormous progress with respect to food supply since the 1960s, when chronic undernutrition was rampant. Table 1 shows that at the aggregate level, about 10 percent of the region's population (approximately 32 million people) live on an inadequate diet, compared to 41 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, 22 percent in South Asia, 16 percent in East Asia, 14 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean and 20 percent in the developing world as a whole (FAOSTAT, 1994). The number of malnourished people, that is people whose diets are lacking in specific nutrients, is expected to decline to 7 percent in 2010 in the Near East region (FAOSTAT, 1994). However, because of rapid increases in the region's population, the actual number of malnourished people will increase from 32 million to 35 million (FAOSTAT, 1994) (Table 1).
Data on per caput calorie availability in the region (Figure 1) indicate an increase from 2 220 kcal/day in 1961 -1963 to 2 380 kcal/day in 1969-1971, to 2 840 kcal/day in 1979-1981 and to 2 960 kcal/day in 1990-1992. An increase to 3 120 kcal/day is expected in the year 2010 (FAOSTAT, 1994).
Another measure of malnutrition is the percentage of children under five years of age who are underweight. According to UNICEF (1996), this percentage has dropped in the Near East and North Africa to less than 20 percent, making the region (with the exception of Latin America and the Caribbean) one with the lowest in the number of underweight children. The under-five mortality rate per 1 000 births has also decreased in the region from 239 in 1960 to 62 in 1994 (UNICEF, 1996). However, this does not mean that there are no reasons for concern over future food availability in the region and problems of hunger and malnutrition. Frequent droughts, an unpredictable growing environment, environmental degradation, and an unstable policy and economic environment plague the Near East and affect the quality and quantity of food produced and consumed, especially on small farms and in low-income households. Indeed, there is evidence to show that the number of poor people in the region is on the rise.
According to the World Bank (1995):
"Based on household surveys, the number of people surviving on less than US$1 a day reached 11 million - an increase of 700 000 between 1985 and 1990... The poor are largely rural, especially farmers with little or no land, and have large households and little education" (p.28).
A significant portion of the population in the Near East reside in rural areas. In Egypt, Yemen, Mauritania, Morocco, Somalia, the Sudan, Oman, Pakistan and Turkey, 50 percent or more of the population is rural (Jazairy et al., 1992). Only in Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan does the rural population constitute less than 40 percent. At the same time, large portions of the rural population live below the poverty line. With the exception of a handful of countries (Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, Oman, Cyprus and Turkey), a quarter or more of the rural population in the rest of the countries is poor (Jazairy et al., 1992). The proportion of the rural population whose income and consumption fall below nationally defined poverty lines is estimated at 26 percent in the Near East and North Africa (IFAD, 1994).
Table 2 provides some poverty data in selected countries of the region. The table shows that the absolute number of poor people has increased with rising populations in Algeria, Iran and Jordan. Examining poverty is important to understanding food insecurity since poverty is the main cause of hunger and malnutrition. Furthermore, reducing poverty improves access to food and eliminates chronic undernutrition (FAO, 1995a:104).
2.1 The status of rural women
2.2 Women in food production
2.3 Women and food security
This section brings together some of the most recent evidence available on the multiple roles that rural women play in agriculture in the Near East. It also describes the social and economic conditions faced by women that affect their contributions to food security.
Rural women in the Near East are among the poorest and most vulnerable segments of the population. According to IFAD (1994), the estimated number of rural women living below the poverty line in the Near East and North Africa region in 1988 was 18 million. According to this same source:
"Despite noteworthy economic growth in the region, the number of women below the poverty line increased. For example in Egypt the increase was as much as 150 percent between 1970 and 1988, 87 percent and 36 percent in Jordan and Morocco respectively, but in Tunisia only 6 percent" (p.12).
Table 1 Global estimates and projections of the incidence of chronic undernutrition by region.
|
Region |
Year* |
Total population |
Undernourished |
|
|
Percentage total pop. |
Persons |
|||
|
Sub-Saharan Africa |
1969-71 |
268 |
36 |
96 |
|
1979-81 |
357 |
39 |
140 |
|
|
1990-92 |
500 |
41 |
204 |
|
|
2010 |
874 |
35 |
302 |
|
|
Near East/North Africa |
1969-71 |
178 |
25 |
44 |
|
1979-81 |
233 |
10 |
24 |
|
|
1990-92 |
317 |
10 |
32 |
|
|
2010 |
513 |
7 |
35 |
|
|
East Asia |
1969-71 |
1147 |
41 |
468 |
|
1979-81 |
1393 |
27 |
371 |
|
|
1990-92 |
1674 |
16 |
262 |
|
|
2010 |
2070 |
5 |
105 |
|
|
South Asia |
1969-71 |
711 |
33 |
233 |
|
1979-81 |
892 |
33 |
297 |
|
|
1990-92 |
1146 |
22 |
250 |
|
|
2010 |
1617 |
15 |
239 |
|
|
Latin America/Caribbean |
1969-71 |
279 |
18 |
51 |
|
1979-81 |
354 |
13 |
46 |
|
|
1990-92 |
443 |
14 |
61 |
|
|
2010 |
593 |
8 |
49 |
|
|
Total |
1969-71 |
2583 |
35 |
893 |
|
1979-81 |
3228 |
27 |
878 |
|
|
1990-92 |
4064 |
20 |
809 |
|
|
2010 |
5668 |
13 |
730 |
|
Source: Adapted from FAOSTAT 1994. * Three- year averages.
Table 2 Number and percentage of poor people in selected countries of the Near East region.
|
Country |
1985 |
1990 |
1994 |
|||
|
'000 |
Percentage of pop. |
'000 |
Percentage of pop. |
'000 |
Percentage of pop. |
|
|
Algeria |
400 |
1.8 |
290 |
1.2 |
439 |
1.6 |
|
Egypt |
3465 |
7.4 |
2936 |
5.6 |
3438 |
6.0 |
|
Iran |
3005 |
6.5 |
4987 |
8.9 |
4394 |
6.9 |
|
Jordan |
110 |
4.2 |
413 |
12.6 |
589 |
13.8 |
|
Morocco |
156 |
7.1 |
625 |
2.5 |
432 |
1.6 |
|
Tunisia |
336 |
4.63 |
233 |
2.9 |
148 |
1.6 |
|
Total |
8885 |
6.06 |
9484 |
5.6 |
9440 |
5.0 |
Source: World Bank, 1995.
Table 3 provides some gender data in the Near East that highlight the conditions of women that interfere with their ability to fulfil their roles as food producers. As in the rest of the world, women's life expectancy at birth is higher than that of men, but is considerably lower than life expectancy figures of women in the developed world. Maternal mortality rates are also high. In the 1980 to 1993 period, the rate averaged 500, 330 and 327 per 100 000 live births in Egypt, Morocco and Yemen, respectively.
Gender-disaggregated data on diet and malnutrition in the Near East are lacking, although several special health surveys have found that more women tend to be malnourished and have poorer diets than men (United Nations, 1991). As in other regions of the world, women eat food left over by men, which is often poorer in quantity and quality.
A large number of women in the region suffer from anaemia, caused almost exclusively by malnutrition. Anaemia, which results from a deficiency of one or more essential nutrients, can cause illnesses, pregnancy complications and maternal death. While 10 percent of male adults in the region suffer from anaemia, up to 20 to 40 percent of adult females, and 70 to 90 percent of pregnant and lactating women, suffer from the same disease (FAO, 1990b).
There are also data showing higher mortality rates among girls aged two to five years, as compared with boys of the same age group. In Syria, for example, the annual deaths per 1 000 population aged two to five years were 14.6 for girls and 9.3 for boys and in Turkey, the number was 19.5 for girls and 18.4 for boys (United Nations, 1991). According to FAO (1990b), infant death is largely attributable to undernutrition associated with infection.
The average number of children per woman in most countries of the region is also high (Table 3). In Yemen, Oman and the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, the average number of children per woman in 1993 was 7.6, 7.2, and 6.4, respectively. Not surprisingly, only a small percentage of women in the region use contraceptives. Data for 1988 to 1993 show that less than 40 percent of women of childbearing age in Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Qatar and Yemen used contraception (Table 3). Child-bearing and child care demand great physical effort from women and interfere with their ability to secure food for the household. In the rural areas where modern health care services are not usually available, life expectancy figures and maternal mortality rates are higher than the national average.
Female illiteracy rates in the region are quite high. Table 3 shows that over 50 percent of women in Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Yemen were illiterate in 1993. However, compared with 1970, the literacy rate for women in most countries in 1990 showed significant improvement (Figure 2), and rapid progress has also been achieved in the enrolment of girls in primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education (Table 3).
Rural women in the Near East constitute an extremely disadvantaged and vulnerable segment of society. Faced with economic hardship and poor social conditions, especially in health and education, it is unlikely that they will be able to tackle the new challenges they now face in securing enough food for the families they support. Consequently, it is imperative
Table 3 Gender-relevant indicators in selected Near Eastern countries
|
|
Population (million) mid-1993 |
Current population growth rate |
Population average annual growth (%) 1993-2000 |
Life* expectancy birth male/female (years) |
Maternal mortality rate (per 100000 live births) 1980-93 |
Average* number of children (per woman) |
Married women childbearing age using contraception (%) 1988-93 |
Female illiteracy |
Females per 100 males, primary school |
Females per 100 males, secondary school |
Female share of labour force (%) |
|
Algeria |
26.7 |
2.4 |
2.2 |
67/68 |
129 |
4.3 |
35 |
55 |
83 |
81 |
10 |
|
Bahrain* |
0.5 |
2.6 |
2.6 |
68/71 |
19 |
3.7 |
54 |
31 |
- |
- |
- |
|
Egypt |
56.4 |
1.9 |
0.3 |
60/63 |
500 |
3.8 |
47 |
66 |
81 |
81 |
11 |
|
Iran |
64.2 |
2.5 |
1.8 |
65/66 |
120 |
5.0 |
63 |
57 |
89 |
78 |
19 |
|
Iraq* |
19.2 |
3.0 |
3.0 |
62/68 |
117 |
5.7 |
37 |
51 |
105 |
49 |
19 |
|
Jordan |
4.1 |
3.3 |
3.3 |
68/72 |
48- |
5.2 |
40 |
30 |
- |
- |
- |
|
Kuwait |
1.8 |
3.6 |
0.4 |
73/78 |
18 |
3.7 |
60 |
33 |
96 |
97 |
16 |
|
Lebanon* |
3.8 |
1.9 |
1.9 |
64/68 |
- |
3.1 |
35 |
27 |
98 |
62 |
11 |
|
Libya |
4.9 |
3.5 |
3.5 |
62/65 |
70- |
6.4 |
35 |
50 |
98 |
62 |
11 |
|
Morocco |
25.9 |
2.0 |
1.9 |
62/65 |
327 |
3.8 |
42 |
62 |
68 |
70 |
21 |
|
Oman |
2.0 |
4.2 |
4.0 |
68/72 |
- |
7.2 |
9 |
- |
90 |
89 |
9 |
|
Qatar* |
0.5 |
2.3 |
2.3 |
68/73 |
19 |
4.0 |
32 |
28 |
96 |
53 |
9 |
|
Saudi Arabia |
17.4 |
3.3 |
3.1 |
68/71 |
52 |
6.4 |
77 |
52 |
88 |
79 |
8 |
|
Syria* |
13.0 |
3.3 |
3.3 |
65/69 |
143 |
4.3 |
40 |
49 |
103 |
43 |
18 |
|
Tunisia |
8.7 |
1.9 |
1.6 |
67/69 |
127 |
3.8 |
50 |
44 |
87 |
82 |
25 |
|
United Arab Emirates |
1.8 |
2.4 |
2.2 |
70/74 |
|
4.5 |
76 |
- |
93 |
105 |
7 |
|
Yemen |
13.2 |
3.3 |
2.1 |
52/53 |
330 |
7.6 |
10 |
74 |
81 |
96 |
14 |
Source: UNDP, World Development Report, 1995; A Population Perspective on Development: The Middle East and North Africa, 1994; Social Indicators of Development, 1995; Human Development Report, 1995.
Note: data refer to 1993 unless otherwise indicated.
a) Data refer to a year or period other than that specified in the column heading, differ from the standard definition or refer to only part of the country.* Data for 1992 that current and future policies and planning procedures include concrete and direct actions seeking to alleviate the constraints faced by rural women in the region, which in turn can improve the productivity of their work in food production and in all other activities that promote rural development.
The extent to which women in the region participate in food production and food security is severely underestimated, mainly because of the scarcity of accurate and up-to-date disaggregated data and statistics, especially at the household level. Recent efforts to disaggregate data by gender at the national level, and information collected in special surveys and microstudies, show that women's contributions are quite significant, especially when unpaid and seasonal labour are taken into account (Table 4). Thus, women constitute 55.3 percent, 53.2 percent, 50.7 percent, 40.7 percent, 34.7 percent, 30.7 percent and 28 percent of paid and unpaid agricultural labour in Turkey, Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, the Sudan, Iraq and Mauritania, respectively (Ebeid, 1995). According to this same source:
"In Syria, women comprise 44 percent of wage labourers and 60 percent of unpaid farm labour, and in Tunisia, women represent 34.7 percent of total temporary paid labour. In Somalia, 66 percent of labour in subsistence farming is provided by women. In Cyprus, women represent 44 percent of total paid labour, while in Pakistan, women constitute 42 percent of total family labour."
One of the reasons why women's contributions to agricultural production have been overlooked in the Near East is because most of the work that they do is invisible (i.e. unpaid work carried out on the family farm, which is usually headed by men). Only a small portion of rural households are female-headed, although it appears that this number is now increasing as a result of temporary and permanent male rural-urban migration, as well as immigration from the poorer countries such as Yemen and Egypt to the oil-exporting countries of the Arabian Gulf, and to Western Europe from Turkey and North Africa. Only in the Sudan and Pakistan does the percentage of female-headed households exceed 20 percent. In Egypt, Morocco, Cyprus, Tunisia, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria and Iran, the share of female-headed households is 16 percent or less.
Figure 2 (Literacy rates (females as percentage of males))
Source: UNDP, 1994.
A review of the data available shows that the majority of women's work goes unpaid, and that women work on small subsistence farms within the context of a male-dominated and patriarchal household, where men, as heads of households, have predominant control over productive resources, decision-making, technology and technical expertise, land, credit and other financial matters (El-Fattal, 1996; FAO, 1995c).
The division of labour according to gender in the Near East tends to reflect the nature of the agricultural enterprise and the operations involved. Men are more likely to be involved in cash crop production and thus more active in capital-intensive, mechanized crops and operations, while women tend to be more involved in food crop production, which is labour-intensive, and in tasks that require little or no mechanization. For example, men are more likely to grow cereals, as cereal production is highly mechanized, while women are more likely to be involved in food legume production. Men are more likely to work in land preparation tasks (such as ploughing, levelling and furrowing) and in transporting and marketing, while women are more likely to be engaged in sowing seeds by hand, weeding, thinning, manual harvesting, sorting, grading, bagging, animal care, dairy production and food processing (El-Fattal, 1996; Tully, 1990; FAO, 1990a).
The extent of women's involvement in agricultural production is a function of their social and economic status. Factors such as landlessness, size of the landholding, farming system, land management practices, labour market forces and the age and marital status of women influence the degree to which women participate in food production (El-Fattal, 1996).
In the Near East, women's contributions to food security at the household level are, to a great extent, hidden because their work is mostly on poorer, smaller, unmechanized, labour-intensive subsistence farms, in contrast to the male-dominated, large-scale, mechanized, capital-intensive farms. Several time-use studies have shown that rural women's work occupies large portions of the day. Women in Yemen, Lebanon, Morocco and Cyprus for example, may spend 16,14,12 and 11 hours a day on household and farming tasks (FAO, 1995c).
In the Near East, women contribute to household food security in three basic ways:
1 Women are almost exclusively responsible for health and child care and access to clean water and sanitation, all of which are key contributors to good nutrition.2 Women provide a substantial amount of labour required on farm to produce food.
3 Women bring in income to buy food from wages they earn off the farm in agricultural or non-agricultural jobs, and from on-farm income-generating activities such as poultry raising, cheese, butter and ghee making, carpet weaving and other artisan work.
Table 4 Women's participation in the agricultural labour force.
|
Country |
Women in labour force (percent of total) (1990-92) |
Percent labour force in agriculture (1990-92) |
Female labour in agri. as percent of female labour force (1988) |
Female labour in agri. as percent of total labour (various years)* |
|
Egypt |
29.0 |
42.0 |
15.0 |
50.7(1988)*** |
|
Iraq |
6.0 |
14.0 |
45.0 |
30.7(1990) |
|
Jordan |
10.0 |
10.0 |
1.0 |
- |
|
Lebanon |
27.0 |
14.0 |
14.0 |
40.7 (1990)*** |
|
Syria |
18.0 |
23.0 |
44.0 |
-44.4 waged |
|
Yemen |
13.0 |
63.0 |
51.0 AR |
-- |
|
Mauritania |
22.0 |
69.0 |
84.0 |
28.0(1988) |
|
Morocco |
26.0 |
46.0 |
32.0 |
53.2 (86-87)**** |
|
Tunisia |
21.0 |
26.0 |
24.0 |
34.7 of total temporary paid labourers (1990) |
|
Somalia |
39.0 |
76.0 |
86.0 |
66.0 of labour in subsistence farming |
|
Sudan |
29.0 |
72.0 |
82.0 |
34.7(1983) |
|
Oman |
8.0 |
49.0 |
16.0 |
-- |
|
UAE |
6.0 |
5.0 |
- |
4.4 of total paid labour (1992) |
|
Cyprus |
38.0 |
15.0 |
30.0 |
44.0 of total paid labour (1992) |
|
Iran |
10.0 |
30.0 |
40.0 |
-- |
|
Pakistan |
28.0 |
47.0 |
36.0 |
42.0 of total family workers (1980) |
|
Turkey |
31.0 |
47.0 |
83.0 |
55.3 total (1990) |
Source: FAO, 1995c.
* Data for this column were compiled from country reports.** According to a Labour Force Sample Survey (1988), where a more flexible definition of work was used to capture unpaid labour.
*** Estimated.
**** According to a special survey that included women's unremunerated labour.
Women as contributors to good nutrition
Women, both urban and rural, spend long hours daily performing numerous time-consuming and labour-intensive tasks in the household such as housekeeping, cleaning, cooking, baking, child rearing and fetching water and fuel for domestic use. One study in Somalia showed that, in the dry season, depending on the village location, women spent up to eight hours daily collecting water for household use (FAO, 1990b). As environmental degradation continues to plague the region, there is some evidence that women are spending more time and travelling longer distances to find potable water and appropriate quantities of fuelwood.
Household tasks are crucial in achieving nutritional security at the household level as good nutrition is a function of "adequate health and child care and access to clean water and good sanitation" (Quisumbing et al., 1995). According to this same source:
"The provision of 'care', namely, paying adequate time and attention to meeting the physical, mental and social needs of growing children and other household members, is a crucial input into good nutrition. Care affects nutrition security in two broad ways: first, through feeding practices such as breast-feeding and the preparation of nutritious foods for weaned infants and others in the household; and second, through health and hygiene practices such as the bathing of children and the washing of hands before food preparation" (p. 12).
Women as contributors to food production
Rural women are responsible for the more labour-intensive, time-consuming tasks associated with crop and livestock production on the family farm. Such unremunerated work may include using their hands or simple tools to broadcast seeds and fertilizers, hand weed and harvest, prune, pick fruits and vegetables manually, and carry produce on their backs. Women are also responsible for many post-harvest activities that require painstaking physical activities and perseverance such as threshing, winnowing, cleaning, sorting, grading and bagging (El-Fattal, 1996).
While data regarding the exact contributions of women to cash crop production and crops grown for household consumption such as cereals, food legumes, vegetables and fruits, are still very scarce, some studies have indicated that women carry out 25 to 30 percent of all labour required in crop production in Tunisia (El-Solh and Chaalala, 1992). In Egypt's Nile delta, women contribute up to 30 percent of the labour required to grow crops (Tully, 1990) and, in Morocco, women contribute up to 25 percent of the total days needed in crop production (Zagdouni and Benatya, 1990).
Data on the Near East also show that women are responsible for the growing of secondary food crops and food gathering (Saunders and Mehenna, 1986; Shalaby, 1991; El-Fattal, 1996), Women grow vegetables, herbs, spices and legumes on small plots, kitchen gardens and marginal land near the farm, or intercropped with cash crops. Women also gather food from wild plants that they use at home or sell when the need arises. These foods provide variation to the household diet and contribute to the household's protein, energy, micronutrient and mineral requirements.
Rural and urban women in the Near East also contribute to household food security by the time-consuming activities they perform in food processing. Food processing not only contributes to food security by reducing food losses, it also permits greater diet diversity throughout the year and provides important sources of vitamins and minerals. Women are heavily engaged in grinding and pounding grain, baking breads, making couscous, processing olive oil, smoking fish and meats, drying herbs and preserving fruit.
Women are almost universally engaged in livestock production, an important and integral part of farming systems in the region, especially on small farms and in nomadic and semi-nomadic societies. Along with sheep and cows, women are responsible for goats, camels, buffalo, donkeys, chickens, rabbits, geese and ducks (El-Fattal, 1996).
Having livestock on the farm contributes to household food security in two ways. First, livestock provides an important source of protein, as meat, milk, cheese or other dairy products, all of which women are responsible for processing and cooking. Second, when the household is in need of cash, livestock can be sold to purchase other types of food, such as tea, sugar and cooking oil. In some villages in Egypt, Shalaby (1991:247) asserts that "livestock is the most valuable resource for home processes products. It helps in home consumption and provides daily cash needs". Owning livestock, especially on smaller and poorer farms, insures the farmer against crop failure, which is particulary important in the Near East region, where climatic variability results in an unstable growing environment (El-Fattal, 1996).
With the exception of herding and marketing, women are active in all tasks: feeding, watering, fodder gathering, poultry and rabbit care, stable cleaning, collecting dung for fertilizer and fuel, care of sick, pregnant and lactating animals, milking, ghee, cheese and butter making, and breeding and selection (El-Fattal, 1996).
Women as contributors to household cash income
Urban and rural women in the Near East seek employment outside the household to obtain cash income, a large portion of which is spent on buying food for the family. Urban women work long hours in the private, public and informal sectors. They usually hold the less prestigious jobs and occupy low-ranking and poorly paid positions.
Poor women farmers in the Near East, from landless households or small subsistence farms, often seek very low-paying work off the farm either as farm labourers or in non-farm work, such as in factories or in domestic work, if the opportunity exists. Although no studies in the region have yet been conducted on how these women spend their earned wages, it is likely that women spend a large portion of this income on purchasing food and in providing health care, clothing and education for the family, as data from other regions of the world indicate (Quisumbing et al.; 1995; Gittinger, 1990).
In the Near East, in spite of government legislation that stipulates minimum pay and equal pay for equal work between the sexes, in most, if not all countries, women earn less than men, often receiving wages significantly lower than the set minimum. In rural areas where the law is more difficult to enforce, women are often paid two-thirds or even half of what men earn for the same type of work (FAO, 1995c).
Women in the Near East also contribute to household food security by selling milk, yoghurt, cheese, eggs and butter, which they are responsible for producing, in order to purchase other types of food such as sugar, tea and cooking oil. The cash income obtained from women's work in livestock may be quite high. Women also obtain cash income from their activities in small-scale home-based poultry enterprises. In this domain, women have the sole responsibility for the work involved, in the selling of chickens and eggs, as well as in how the income is spent. Cash income is also earned through activities such as carpet weaving, tent making and embroidery (Zimmermann, 1982; FAO 1995c; El-Fattal, 1996).
3.1 Exclusion from power and decision-making
3.2 Poor institutional support
3.3 Lack of land rights
3.4 Lack of credit
3.5 Inappropriate technology
3.6 Insufficient education
3.7 Neglect by agricultural extension services
3.8 Exclusion from research
Experience has shown that resources in the hands of women often have a greater nutritional benefit to households than the same resources controlled by men. Women are more likely than men to spend a given income on food for the family. Thus, resources for women represent resources for food security. Reducing gender disparities by enhancing the human and physical resources commanded by women leads to growth in household agricultural productivity, greater income and better food and nutrition security for all (Gittinger, 1990; Quisumbing et al., 1995).
However, data collected in the region show that rural women are poorly supported in political, economic and social development efforts and that large gender gaps exist with respect to women's access to power and the resources necessary to achieve food security (political representation, education, technology, credit, research, extension services, etc.). The following sections present the data available in the region regarding the above constraints in more detail. Unless specified otherwise, the sections draw heavily from the FAO publication Women, agriculture and rural development: a synthesis report of the Near East region, 1995. This document analyses and consolidates the most recent and available data on women in agriculture in the Near East. Data were compiled by coordinators from 17 countries in the region using various methods such as participatory rural appraisals, rapid rural appraisals, national consultations, field visits and review of available national data and microstudies. The purpose of this document was to provide the background information needed to prepare FAO's Regional Plan for Action in the Near East (1996 to 2000), or RPAWANE 2000.
While countries in the region fare relatively well when compared with the rest of the world in terms of food security indicators such as the number of poor people, calorie intake and the percentage of undernourished children, they compare a lot less favourably when rural women's issues are examined. This is especially true with respect to their representation in national and local power structures, at decision-making and policy-making levels, and at the farm household level. Without adequate representation and access to power, women cannot be involved in the decision-making processes that affect their lives. Thus, rural women are unlikely to have any significant impact on the formulation of policies aimed at increasing food production and ensuring food security at the household level.
Women in the region lag far behind their counterparts in the rest of the world in their economic and social participation and decision-making (UN, 1991), in spite of substantial improvements in institutional representation and support since the early 1980s. While most countries in the region have granted women equal rights with regard to important legal issues, education, private ownership, employment, social security and welfare services, large gender gaps continue to exist in these domains.
When regions of the world are compared, the percentage of women in parliamentary assemblies is lowest in North Africa and Western Asia (UN, 1991:32). In fact, in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, the Sudan, Cyprus, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates, women make up less than 4 percent of parliamentary representation.
In ministries of agriculture, men still comprise the overwhelming majority of those employed. Very few women hold high-ranking policy-making positions. In Egypt, in 1992, less than 5 percent of the 62 administrative positions at the Ministry of Agriculture were held by women. In Syria and the Sudan, only one out of the 49, and one out of the 61 managerial positions at their ministries of agriculture were held by women, respectively. In Yemen, in 1990, only 3.7 percent of the policy-making positions were held by women and, in Jordan, the figure was only 1.5 percent (FAO, 1995c:24). Turkey, with 6 percent, has the highest representation of women in decision-making positions in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
Women in the region are also unlikely to participate in agricultural cooperatives or other rural organizations, either as office-bearers or members. In the countries where data are available, women constitute less than 10 percent of members in various cooperatives and rural organizations (in Iraq, 9.4 percent; Jordan 9.3 percent; Iran 9 percent; and Turkey 1 percent). As office-holders in cooperatives and rural organizations, women constitute 29.4 percent and 5 percent of employees in Jordan and Iraq, respectively, while 18, 3 and 2.6 percent of decision-making positions in these organizations are occupied by women in the Sudan, Cyprus and Mauritania.
Women's participation in these organizations can promote household food security by assisting them in selling their produce and: "are often channels through which agricultural extension services, agricultural inputs and credit are directed... (and) serve as a platform for making the voice of farming women heard more effectively in matters that concern them" (FAO, 1990a:8).
There is insufficient research in the region regarding who makes decisions at the household level. Since men have predominant control over productive inputs and cash income, it would be safe to assume that men generally control decision-making, especially since the majority of households in the region are male-headed and patriarchal. Thus, men are likely to decide on the agricultural practices to be pursued during the season, and when to buy or sell crops and livestock, livestock feed, fertilizers and seeds. They are also more likely to control financial matters such as credit and loans, marketing and the allocation of income and savings and land selling and rental transactions.
Some evidence suggests that certain types of decisions are made jointly between men and women, and that women predominate in issues relating to family matters such as marriage, education, divorce, child care, nutrition and household food purchases.
Women are more likely to have a greater say in domains in which they provide a significant portion of the work required, such as in livestock, poultry and kitchen garden food production. Moreover, some studies have shown that a woman's negotiating power and her status within the household improve if she is married with children (especially sons) and if she is elderly (Taylor, 1987). Additional power is wielded if she brings in cash income and contributes to household expenditures. Thus, any efforts to increase women's access to resources and skills in income-generating activities have the spillover effect of improving women's authority and decision-making power at the household level.
Despite a growing recognition of women's critical role in food production and food security, institutional support to rural women in the Near East has been weak. Government, non-governmental and international efforts remain limited in nature and scope. While variation exists among the countries with respect to the support given to rural women from these various institutions, for the most part, efforts have been small-scale, one-time initiatives that target only a very small number of women beneficiaries. Very few projects have been innovative, and fewer still extend support to women farmers by providing them with credit, land, technology or training for food production and household food security purposes.
At the government level, several Women in Development (WID) Units and other national machineries have been set up to empower women. More often than not, these bodies have vague or limited mandates, with little impact at the national policy level, and suffer considerably from poor funding and limited access to appropriate human and technical resources. These machineries tend to operate outside mainstream development efforts and, so far, have had very little impact on improving the conditions of rural women.
A few countries, such as Egypt, the Sudan, Tunisia and Turkey, have well-established WID structures with clear-cut objectives. Some units in the region (in Egypt, Yemen, the Sudan, Iran and Turkey) have been established at a high level within their ministries of agriculture and have been given the tasks of: promoting gender awareness among men and women through gender planning and training; mainstreaming gender considerations in agricultural policies and practices; conducting research and collecting information on women in agriculture (data, documents, etc.); facilitating women's access to productive resources and services; and coordinating the activities of national and international bodies. For the most part, however, these structures have not yet been successful in incorporating gender issues into food and agricultural development policies and strategies.
Rural women are, in general, poorly supported by NGOs. Although a large number of NGOs operate in the region, few have concentrated their work in rural areas. The number of rural projects and their beneficiaries is quite small. When projects are directed at rural women, they are often one-time, small-scale, income-generating efforts and revolve around educational, health and vocational training. While these are important elements in assisting women to achieve food security at the household level, further efforts are needed to address women's needs in large-scale food production activities, such as crop and livestock production, directly. Specifically, efforts should be directed at developing and providing women with new time-saving and labour-saving technologies to produce and process food more efficiently.
International support for rural women in the region is also poor. The few projects that have been instituted are small-scale, localized and isolated, with little potential for any significant large-scale impact on improving women's contribution to food security. To date, the majority of projects have targeted education, health and family planning needs and have provided training and inputs for small-scale traditional women's enterprises such as weaving and animal husbandry. While these are commendable efforts, more innovative approaches are needed to target larger numbers of rural women and assist them in their efforts to increase food production and establish household food security. Examples of such efforts include interventions that seek to develop and provide agricultural technologies, credit and extension to women farmers, redistribute land to women or increase the demand for women's paid labour in rural areas.
Despite the fact that few high-impact policies and projects have been instituted in the region to support rural women in food security, some significant first-time initiatives have been undertaken, which set the stage for future work in the field . However, these remain isolated, localized and dispersed efforts that target only a small number of rural women.
In the Near East region, as is the case in most of the developing world, legal, social, and institutional barriers are responsible for the great inequalities in women's access to productive resources such as land, credit, education, research and technology. These inequalities prevent women from reaching their full potential as food producers and as income earners and seriously undermine efforts to achieve equitable and sustainable food security in the region. The following sections examine the extent to which rural women in the region suffer from these constraints.
Since official landownership records do not exist in many countries of the region, very few data are available on how landownership varies by gender. Caution should be exercised in analysing available landownership records since farmers tend to under-report for fear of taxation and government control.
Whatever few data exist indicate considerable variation among the countries. What emerges consistently is that women rarely own arable land, although civil and religious law permit ownership and the buying and selling of land by women. Furthermore, although some women hold land titles, more often than not, they give up their rights to them to male members of the family (sons, husbands, fathers) who control them, in exchange for favours or a portion of the land's remittances.
In Jordan, women own 28.6 percent of the land, while in the United Arab Emirates and Oman, 4.9 and 0.4 percent of land is owned by women, respectively. Surveys in selected regions in Egypt, Morocco and Lebanon show that women own 24 ,14.3 and 1 percent of landholdings. Cyprus stands out as an exception, where 51.4 percent of the land is owned by women. A comparison of women and men landowners in Egypt, Morocco and Oman shows that female landholdings are smaller than male landholdings. In Morocco and Oman, on average, men's landholdings were two and three times the size of women's, respectively.
Many land reform efforts and irrigation and resettlement projects have ignored women as potential beneficiaries (Quisumbing et al., 1995:3). In Egypt, for example, only 7.4 percent of the newly reclaimed land was distributed to women agricultural graduates and, in Morocco, only 4 percent of the land that was redistributed after independence was allocated to women.
Without the ability to exercise their right to landownership, women lack collateral and are thus denied the benefit of policies and institutions designed to alleviate gender inequality and increase their contributions to food security, such as access to credit from rural banks and other means of empowerment (e.g. new technology and more land).
Rural women in the region have very little opportunity to access credit, which is important for them in order to expand agricultural production or earn more income to purchase food. Special credit facilities for women in the region are limited, and some of the major impediments to women's access to credit are poor infrastructure, female illiteracy, the lack of education and information, tradition and custom, and the absence of collateral, especially in the form of landownership.
In Cyprus, which stands out as an exception, approximately one-quarter of all agricultural loans in the past ten years were disbursed to women. In Iran, only 15 percent of all loans disbursed by the Agricultural Bank in 1993 were extended to women. In Jordan and Turkey, women received only 6 and 2.8 percent of the total loans disbursed by the Agricultural Credit Corporation and the Agricultural Bank, respectively. In Egypt, efforts to establish special funds for women farmers by the Principal Bank for Development and Agricultural Credit resulted in women receiving 12 percent of all short-term production loans and 16 percent of investment loans in 1993.
Women in the Near East Region perform their work in food security with very little access to labour-saving equipment (e.g. tools, threshers, harvesters, transportation vehicles) and technology (e.g. improved seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, technical expertise). Equipment and technology increase the efficiency of farm and household work, improve agricultural yields and increase food production. In the dwelling itself, many women perform household tasks without electricity, running water, sewage and garbage disposal and adequate cooking and food storage facilities.
Women's access to technology is limited by several factors including their lack of cash income or credit to purchase technology, and their lack of contact with extension services and cooperatives. Tradition encourages men to take control over mechanized land preparation, sowing, fertilizing, herbicide and pesticide use, harvesting and post-harvesting activities, leaving women with the more labour-intensive and time-consuming non-mechanized tasks such as hand-sowing, hand-weeding and harvesting, and picking fruits and vegetables. Moreover, new technology has often been inappropriate to women's needs. For example, while mechanization of some farm practices, such as sowing and harvesting, has reduced drudgery and increased productivity, mechanization has also reduced poorer women's prospects for employment and cash income (Buvinic and Mehra, 1990).
Appropriate technologies, specifically to enhance women's contributions to food security in the region, have yet to be developed. Efforts are needed to develop appropriate, gender-sensitive and environmentally sustainable technologies. The introduction of such technology must be preceded by careful examination of their socio-economic and gender implications, especially with respect to any differential impact the technology may have on men and women and on rich and poor farmers.
Education is one of the most critical areas of empowerment for women and enhances their contributions to household food security. The relationship between food security and education stems from the fact that educated men and women farmers are more likely to have access to and use information and technology to produce more food, and are more likely to take advantage of extension services and credit facilities. An educated woman is also more likely to provide better health care and nutrition to her family members, and to encourage her children to pursue education. Indeed, there is a strong positive relationship between reducing the gender gap in education and economic growth on the national level (Sadeghi, 1995).
Rural women in the Near East lag far behind men and their urban counterparts in education and training, in spite of major wide-scale campaigns to address this issue. According the United Nations (1991), the North Africa and West Asia region has the second lowest percentage of literate women in the world. In this region, over 70 percent of women aged 25 and over are illiterate. The rural female illiteracy rate in the region is over 90 percent, the highest figure, when compared with other regions of the world. Although the female literacy rate more than doubled between 1970 and 1990, two-thirds of the region's estimated 65 million illiterate adults are women.
Girls receive much less schooling than boys, although the gap is quickly shrinking as a result of compulsory education laws in many countries of the region, and because of large efforts in the building of free government schools in rural areas. In 1960, the enrolment rate for girls was 28 percent. This figure had soared by 1990 to 70 percent (UNICEF, 1996:49). In the rural areas, the gap between boys and girls in primary and secondary school enrolment is larger than it is in urban regions. This is mainly attributed to economic necessity and strong conservative traditions, as well as to the limited number of schools at the village level and the reluctance of parents to send their girls to distant educational facilities. Girls are withdrawn from school at an early stage for marriage and because they can assist their mothers in household and farm work.
At secondary schools, vocational schools and universities, the gap between male and female enrolment is higher, although the number of women seeking higher education in agriculture is increasing in all countries of the region. The number of female students enrolled in higher agricultural education was highest in Jordan (45.1 percent) followed by Morocco (37 percent), Turkey (36.8 percent), Lebanon (35 percent) and Egypt (31.4 percent). In Cyprus, Iran, Iraq, Oman, Tunisia and Yemen, less than 30 percent of students enrolled in higher agricultural education were women (FAO, 1995c). As a result, very few women in the region work in agricultural institutions.
Agricultural extension provides farmers with information and training in new technologies to grow agricultural produce more efficiently. In the Near East region, extension services rely mainly on conventional methods, such as farm visits and village meetings, to provide technical information to the farmer. Data from the region show that the vast majority of extension officers are male and most, if not all, of their target farmers are men, in spite of women's active involvement in food production. This is largely a result of tradition, which limits contact between the sexes and discourages women from attending meetings outside the house. Women's heavy workload also prevents them from taking time off to attend meetings and courses away from home.
According to Saito and Spurting (1992), in the Near East, women constitute 19.5 percent of all extension staff and only 9.5 percent of all field extension staff, indicating that, while some women may be trained as extension officers, very few of them venture out of their offices to contact farmers. Data at the country level indicate even fewer female extension officers. In Yemen, the Sudan, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Cyprus and Iran, the percentages of female extension workers are estimated at 19.6, 12, 11.7, 4.8, 4.2, 2.6 and 1.9, respectively (FAO, 1995c). When extension is provided to rural women, it is usually on topics such as food and nutrition, health, child care and home management. While these are important elements for food security, what is severely lacking is training in equally important domains such as growing high-yielding crop varieties and more productive farming practices. Since women farmers in this region have difficulty in gaining access to information and are hard to reach by conventional extension methods, carefully produced radio programmes may be used as a way to provide them with technical information on improving their farming operations, especially as this medium is widely available in many rural households.
Women also suffer from "a lack of recognition of expertise they have acquired" as food producers (Quisumbing et al., 1995:7). As a result of this, not only is international and national agricultural research designed and conducted almost exclusively by male scientists, research also takes place on isolated research stations or on large farmers' plots with only male farmers attending, almost always without any regard to women's knowledge of indigenous crop varieties and planting systems, water and land conservation, conservation of biological diversity and the sustainable use of biological resources. On-station and on-farm yield trials and adoption and impact studies take place without any consultation with women farmers, who may have a deeper (and different) understanding of the growing environment than their male counterparts.
4.1 The importance of research at the farm level
4.2 Improving the educational and health status of women
4.3 Increasing women's productivity by removing barriers to productive resources
4.4 Gender-sensitive policies to increase household food security
Rural women in the Near East play a major role in agricultural production systems and contribute substantially to both household and national food security. As members of rural households, women perform the bulk of household subsistence work, as well as providing major work in food production (crop and livestock) and food provision, and are the prime caretakers of their families' nutritional requirements. At the same time, women perform these multiple roles under very difficult and unequal conditions. Compared with men, women suffer from more political, economic, educational and health constraints, and have limited access to productive resources such as credit, land, technology and extension services.
Recent evidence has shown that a more equal distribution of existing resources between men and women, along with specific efforts to alleviate the constraints that rural women face, can lead to increasing household food security, reducing rural poverty and assisting in the achievement of broad sustainable development goals (Quisumbing et al., 1995).
While some important policy measures and programme initiatives have been taken by governments in the region since the late 1980s, which have had positive impacts on rural women, and gender issues are being mainstreamed in development efforts in several countries, there is still much to be done.
Taking into account the specific conditions and constraints faced by rural women in the Near East, this section provides suggestions for future policies and programmes that can enhance rural women's potential as full and equal partners in the process of sustainable rural development. The recommendations given are not intended to be absolute or all-inclusive. Rather, they provide an approach and guidelines to the type of efforts that can assist rural women in the Near East.
One of the most effective ways to reduce rural poverty and increase food security is to increase the productivity of smaller and poorer farmers (Buvinic and Mehra, 1990). As indicated in this chapter, a large number of farms in the Near East belong to these categories. Research projects can be designed initially to define the roles of women and men on small landholdings (activities analysis) and the specific constraints that they face. This can be followed by technological development and technical and financial assistance that benefit both male and female farmers (such as agricultural diversification as a risk-reducing strategy). Of particular importance are projects that can increase women's income-earning potential while reducing the energy or time requirement of their activities (Quisumbing et al., 1995). Raising the level of household income has a direct effect on improving food security in households.
Designing microenterprise projects for women has been relatively successful in increasing the income of poor women from small landholdings. These projects provide short-term loans with low collateral for women to operate small-scale businesses (preferably home-based) such as carpet weaving, sewing and embroidery, and food processing and preservation. A marketing component to such projects is essential to ensure that women's outputs are sold, and sold at a fair price.
Good health and education of rural women contribute to food security by allowing women to fulfil their productive and reproductive roles more efficiently. The specific health and educational needs of rural women in the Near East must be identified and wide-scale efforts (policies, programmes, projects or otherwise) should be instituted such as:
Health:
1 providing special feeding schemes for low-income households and pregnant and lactating women;2 running campaigns to improve health and nutrition education;
3 improving access to low-cost rural-based health facilities;
4 providing preventive health care such as immunization and family planning;
5 strengthening maternal care, both pre- and post-natal;
6 expanding women's participation as health planners and managers and in service delivery;
7 providing better water supplies and improved environmental sanitation.
Education:
1 increasing the number of qualified female teachers;
2 providing adult education to women (literacy and basic skills);
3 providing basic skills and traditional and non-traditional job training and skills for girls;
4 designing more appropriate curricula that teach health, nutrition and better child care;
5 designing special schools for girls (sex-segregated, walled and safe) with flexible hours;
6 encouraging women in educational leadership.
Efforts should include:
1 Ensuring that land reform policies, land settlement schemes and irrigation projects are designed to include a larger number of women as potential beneficiaries.2 Setting up informal credit systems for women farmers to obtain capital as an alternative to formal credit systems (e.g. cooperative banks for women, simple application forms, assistance in application and record-keeping). The design should take into account several important factors such as low collateral and minimum travel to credit source. Credit terms can be defined to include the various types of enterprises that rural women in the Near East undertake.
3 Training more women extension officers to work with women farmers on subjects of relevance to women. Extension can be carried out via television and radio. Programmes can be directed specifically at rural women's concerns and may focus on the crops that women produce (e.g. food legumes and vegetables) and the tasks they perform (weeding and post-harvest activities).
4 Designing time- and labour-saving appropriate technologies and implements to assist women in their daily tasks, make their work more productive and free them to spend more time in income-producing activities. Specifically, new technology is needed to reduce the time and effort rural women in the Near East spend on fetching water and fuel, as well as in food technology and post-harvest work such as food processing. In addition, technology is needed to help women produce more food. Research can focus on animal husbandry (especially on the area of health and animal feed), and increasing the yields of crops for which women have predominant responsibility, such as food legumes. Women can be encouraged to use better-quality seeds and disease- and drought-resistant crop varieties.
5 Training more women scientists to conduct gender-sensitive research and encourging women farmers to participate in on-going field trials to state their preferences and provide their opinions and evaluations.
Efforts should include:
1 Developing a framework whereby accurate information about the status of women is regularly collected, analysed and used to assist policy-makers and planners in designing macropolicies and projects to improve the status of women and enhance their contributions to household food security.2 Developing policy research at the national level in order to determine the impact of structural adjustment programmes on rural households (especially smallholders and women farmers) and developing appropriate measures to ensure positive effects, or reduce negative ones.
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