Gender responsive water and agriculture assessments start in Egypt
In Egypt, the assessment started in Al-Minya governorate where four male farmers and eight female farmers were interviewed, providing information about their daily lives, gender roles, and dynamics, to inform FAO’s future interventions.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is undertaking gender-responsive water assessments to assess the relative situation of women and men in different communities regarding water access, governance, and use in order to ensure that water resources are governed in a way that is sustainable and inclusive in the projects areas and that women and men are benefitting equitably from these resources. This activity falls within the project ‘Implementing the 2030 Agenda for water efficiency/productivity and water sustainability in NENA countries’, implemented by FAO with funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).
Agriculture is a key sector in the Egyptian economy, contributing 11.3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. The agriculture sector is the largest employer of women in Egypt, with almost 45 percent of women in the workforce, although these figures might not be capturing the right involvement and contributions of women in agriculture-related activities inside and outside the households. Rural women’s roles in farming activities are more diversified and enlarged recently. More than 50 percent of rural women are actively involved in informal tasks such as fertilization, weeding, harvesting, sacking, marketing and storage of the agriculture products. Some also undertake ploughing and irrigation. Women also carry out all domestic tasks, including water and fuel collection, and food processing and preparation.