Launching of the Program to Accelerate the Empowerment of Rural Women and Environmental Sustainability

Context

In the region, women are disproportionately affected by poverty and food and nutrition insecurity. According to an analysis carried out by the UNDP in 10 Latin American countries, multidimensional poverty affects 18.8% of urban women, a percentage that is almost three times higher in the case of rural women (58%).  A situation that is directly related to the gender gap in food and nutritional security is 11.3 percentage points, being considerably larger than the global gap of 4.3. It is relevant to highlight that 57% of this gender gap would be explained by disparities in education and training, full-time employment, and participation in the labor force.

Women make up 36 percent of all workers in Latin American and Caribbean agri-food systems, particularly as non-agricultural workers, which can increase barriers to accessing social policies for rural workers. Latin America and the Caribbean is the only region in the world where the proportion of women among all workers employed in agriculture has increased slightly between 2010 and 2019. However, women are more likely to be in vulnerable forms of employment and face rates of informality higher than men, creating additional barriers to accessing social protection, financing and extension services and productive resources, limiting opportunities to engage in more profitable activities in tree-based enterprises, for example.  Added to these limitations is the fact that rural women face an overload of unpaid work, largely generated by care responsibilities. These limitations are exacerbated in the region for indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants and youth.

At the same time, the state of biodiversity in the region and the threats it faces are worrying. As a result of the climate crisis and other factors, key ecosystems such as forests, grasslands, mangroves, coral reefs and seagrasses continue to shrink and degrade, where despite the vital role of rural women as guardians of biodiversity, their contributions are often not recognized and are considered limited to the domestic sphere.

Faced with this challenging scenario in relation to gender equality and sustainability, FAO and its partners will implement the Programme to accelerate the empowerment of rural women and environmental sustainability, a regional initiative that will develop pilot actions in Honduras, Jamaica and Dominican Republic, reinforcing the commitment to achieving the SDGs, especially with the goal of accomplishing gender equality, as evidenced by its 2021-2030 Strategic Framework and the Organization's Gender Equality Policy.

The Programme considers raising awareness and developing the capacities of governments to address the empowerment of women producers from the integration of gender-transformative approaches with the recovery of ecosystems and biodiversity, along with the implementation of a Farmers Field School programme focused on  women producers, which will be enhanced by the development of guidelines for standards and tools aimed at strengthening and certifying sustainable productive practices of rural women for access to the local, national and regional market. Finally, to scale the scope of the Programme and promote the development of strategic alliances for the sustainability of the Programme results, a regional platform will be launched for the exchange of knowledge on gender-transformative practices in the agri-food sector for the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem restoration.

In order to publicize this initiative and strengthen existing alliances, FAO invites the governments of the region, private sector entities and rural producer organizations to a launch event for the Programme.

Methodology

The launch event will be held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The modality of this will be hybrid, which implies that the live event will be broadcast via streaming at the regional level, through FAO Americas accounts.

The event will have simultaneous translation from Spanish to English.

Participants

• Mr. Mario Lubetkin, FAO Deputy Director-General and FAO Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean.
• Dominican Republic representative
• Honduras representative
• Jamaica representative
• Female rural leader, Dominican Republic
• Ms. Claudia Brito, FAO Policy Officer for Latin America and the Caribbean. Expert on Gender, Social and Institutional Systems.