International Women's Day: Governments must put women's rights on the Frontline against Hunger
On International Women’s Day 2010, ActionAid calls on governments to put women’s rights on the frontline in the fight against hunger.
With more than a billion hungry people worldwide – most of whom are women – the problem of hunger is far from solved. Women’s access and control of resources is crucial to addressing this global issue.
Women are responsible for some 60-80% of food production in developing countries 1, yet they lack access to credit and equipment that is often funded by European Aid. Women own less than 2% of land in the world 2 and rural women receive less than 10% of the credit available in Africa 3.
“Women toil in most of the world’s fields, from planting potatoes in South America to harvesting maize in Africa or sowing rice in the waterlogged farms of Asia. Yet many do not own the land they work and cannot access extension services, subsidised credit or join co-operatives and farmers unions”, said Everjoice Win, ActionAid’s Head of Women’s Rights.
“Their status as farmers must be recognised. They should be given equal rights to access, control and own land”, she said.
Despite some progress since the United Nation’s 4th Conference on Women in 1995, which produced the Beijing Platform for Action4, in many countries women are still denied the right to own, control or inherit land.
The lack of political representation accorded to women in the developing world means that they are forced to suffer in silence as their basic rights are denied.
Women farmers also have to compete with European governments and companies for access to the land that they have farmed for generations, which is being grabbed for the production of biofuels and other corporate crops.
“Eliminating discrimination in land and property rights is essential to rolling back the impoverishment of millions of women worldwide and is, without doubt, a necessary condition for equitable sustainable development”, said Win.
“As the world’s largest donor of development aid, the EU has a duty to ensure that its money is available to those who need it most. Women smallholder farmers hold the key to ending hunger. They need our support”.
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HungerFREE and International Women's Day around the world
Notes to Editors:
1 FAO, Economic and Social Perspectives - Policy Brief N°5, 2009 ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/012/ak485e/ak485e00.pdf
2 IFAD, Factsheet on Women www.ifad.org/pub/factsheet/women/women_e.pdf
3 FAO, Bridging the gap. FAO programme for gender equality in agriculture and rural development, 2009
4 In March 2010 the 54th session of the Commission on the Status of Women will undertake a 15 year review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA).
