CSW66 side event - Empowering Women through Cooperatives

 
Side event on the margins of the 66th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66)

'Empowering Women through Cooperatives'

Keynote remarks by FAO, delivered by

FAO Chief Scientist, Ismahane Elouafi

It is really my pleasure to provide some remarks at this important side event on “Empowering Women through Cooperatives,” and I would like to commend the Ministry of Family and Social Services and the Permanent Mission of Turkey for drawing the attention of the international community to such an important topic.

And let me tell you, that first, as a Moroccan, I have seen how cooperatives – particularly women cooperatives – have changed the lives of so many women, particularly the rural women.

We all know that closing the gender gap in agri-food systems is essential to eradicating hunger, malnutrition, and poverty. This is in line with the pledge of “leaving no one behind”, which is really at the heart of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. 

Maybe, many of us are no longer talking about any more about the Millennium Goals, but the Millennium did very well, but we recognize that, although we have ticked many boxes, we left so many people behind. Those people behind are mostly people in marginal environments, and most of the time, there are marginalized communities within marginal environments, so it is both a biophysical marginality of ecosystems, but also social marginality in terms of poverty. 

And that’s where I think for me, the 2030 Agenda, the most important component of it beyond all the SDGs – but particular SDG 1 and 2 – is actually the “leaving no one behind”. We have to make sure this time, we are protecting those who need it the most.

Evidence shows that, globally, women comprise over 35 percent of the world’s rural agricultural workforce, a ratio that rises to nearly 50 percent for low-income countries, so women’s contribution is prominent in all agricultural subsectors.

While we have witnessed remarkable progress in advancing gender equality in some areas, significant gaps remain to be addressed. For instance, women are more likely to be food-insecure than men in every region of the world, and COVID-19 has increased the gap, with women 10 percent more likely to face food insecurity than men in 2020. As producers, rural women face even greater constraints than men in accessing essential productive resources and services, technology, market information, and financial assets. They are under-represented in producer organizations, such as cooperatives and local institutions, and tend to have less access to decision-making power in the public, but also in the private, spheres.

Studies show that out of the 1.3 billion people who live on less than USD 1.25 per day, and who depend on natural resources for employment, some 800 million are women and girls – as opposed to 500 million men and boys. So, you have 800 million women and girls versus 500 million men and boys in terms of poverty and very low wages per day. One of the many reasons for this gender gap is the absence of economic opportunities for women. 

And that is where cooperatives come into play. Cooperatives can play a crucial role in the promotion of rural entrepreneurship and business development by directly supporting productive self‐employment and generating additional employment opportunities. Moreover, by acting collectively as a cooperative, women increase their bargaining power and income while reducing their transaction costs. 

Regardless of the sector they belong to or the types of cooperatives – whether agricultural, financial, or social – cooperatives can be powerful vehicles of social inclusion and political and economic empowerment of their members because of the values on which they are based, such as equality, solidarity, social responsibility, and leadership. 

For instance, cooperatives offer networks of mutual support and solidarity for women to build on their social capital, improve their self-reliance, acquire a greater voice in decision making, and collectively improve their access to a wide range of resources and services, including productive assets, markets to commercialize their products, credit, and other financial and social services.

That is why FAO, at field level, has been promoting the establishment of women-led cooperatives, as well as the participation of women in farmers’ cooperatives and organizations. Within the framework of a Canada-funded project, FAO, in collaboration with the Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture, provided more than 270 women's cooperatives, associations, and informal groups with capacity building programmes to help women acquire the entrepreneurial skills needed to develop a profitable business.

In this regard, FAO launched a project in Turkey that prioritized unemployed women seeking to start small-scale income generating activities. In Izmir, for example, FAO provided support to Syrian and Turkish women to establish cooperatives for food production. Through this approach, women not only had access to income-generating opportunities, but also explored new innovative business ideas, and consequently, built self-confidence, social networks, and agency.

There is no doubt that cooperative membership has a particularly strong, positive impact on women’s decision-making and leadership authority at household and community levels. However, participation alone is not sufficient to ensure women’s needs and demands are effectively addressed. To date, women’s leadership in rural cooperatives continues to be limited. 

There is still much to be done. I have a few ideas to share with you on what we need to do to correct the actions.

• The first is pro‐active measures are needed to encourage women’s leadership in mixed cooperatives and support the establishment of women‐only cooperatives, according to local needs and contexts. 
• The second one is that we must address structural inequalities, shift gender and social norms, and increase women's involvement in the formulation of national frameworks, policies and programmes, as this can help promote women's strong presence and leadership in cooperatives and farmers groups. FAO promotes the adoption of gender-transformative approaches, both at the global, regional, national, community, and at the household levels.
• Third, there is need to invest in the institutional development of women’s cooperatives by providing them with skills, resources, services, technologies, and innovations, and facilitating business development opportunities and market linkages.

FAO has been recommending these actions to its Members. We work with many governments to adopt policies and programmes that foster women’s leadership in rural communities, producer cooperatives, organizations, and beyond for efficient, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable agri-food systems, so that we get to a better production, a better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life.

In conclusion we shall remember that women’s empowerment is a long process that does not happen overnight. Through collective action and participation in the public life, women have the possibility to build both individual and collective identity, which is an important aspect of women’s empowerment. Cooperatives offer women a pathway through which they can improve their condition and status, and be agents of change for themselves and for other women. Through them, women can lead the efforts, alongside men, of creating a sustainable tomorrow.

And maybe, just a last idea to share with you, is that whatever we are discussing has to make it into policies, because standing by women without putting in place a policy and a framework, and a law, to protect her and provide her with resources and to access to resources, whatever those resources are, it stays as words, it stays as emotional support. It doesn’t translate into tangible things. Only by putting things in policy and making sure that policy is really enforced, it Is really used, then we can change the reality in the livelihoods of those women.

Thank you very much for your attention, and I would really like to thank the distinguished speakers for their valuable contributions.