Last March in New York the sixty-second Commission on the Status of Women (CSW62) took place with a priority focus on ‘Challenges and opportunities in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of rural women and girls’. The Commission recognized in its conclusions «the crucial contributions of rural women to local and national economies (…) and to achieving food security and improved nutrition (…) and to well-being of their families and communities (…)». It also expressed concern at the fact that«many rural women continue to be discriminated against, marginalized and economically and socially disadvantaged owing to, inter alia, their limited or lack of access to economic resources and opportunities, decent work, social protection, quality education, public health, including health-care services, justice, sustainable and time- and labour saving infrastructure and technology, land, water and sanitation and other resources, as well as to financial services, credit, extension services and agricultural inputs»