The UN System: Working Together to Empower Rural Women

Rural women are active agents of economic and social change and environmental protection who are, in many ways and to various degrees, constrained in their roles as farmers, producers, investors, caregivers and consumers. They play crucial roles ensuring food and nutrition security, eradicating rural poverty and improving the well-being of their families yet continue to face serious challenges as a result of gender-based stereotypes and discrimination that deny them equitable access to opportunities, resources, assets and services.

The 10th session of the Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality (IANWGE) established a one year Inter-Agency Task Force on rural women to provide strategic direction and guidance to relevant UN processes and UN agencies working on promoting the achievement of the MDGs in rural areas, with a particular emphasis on rural women. Coordinated by FAO, IFAD and WFP, the Task Force is contributing to the preparations for the priority theme of the Commission on the Status of Women 2012. Its work will also feed into the Rio +20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as the MDG Summit in 2015, and will help define new post-2015 global targets and goals that take into consideration the situation of rural women. The process is expected to strengthen the ways in which the UN system addresses gender inequalities and discrimination amongst women in rural areas.

The Task Force also identified a number of strengths and complementarities of each member agency in addressing the different challenges facing rural women.


Education, Training & Information	Health
Rural women's access to education and training can have a major impact on their potential to access and benefit from income-generating opportunities and improve their overall well-being. Read more »	Rural women encounter numerous constraints in accessing affordable, adequate health services in rural areas (e.g. clinics, hospitals, reproductive health/family planning and counseling). Read more »

Access to Productive Resources, Assets, Services and Infrastructure	Food Security
Women face gender disparities in access to and control over land, as well as a lack of access to other productive resources and services. Read more »	Food security is defined as having four main components: availability, access, utilization, and stability. Women play key roles in maintaining all four pillars of food security. Read more »

Social Protection	Decent Work
Access to adequate social protection is recognized as a basic right essential for ensuring widespread human welfare. It is also central to contributing to an enabling environment for growth, social stability and economic performance. Read more »	Agricultural and rural non-farm employment play a critical role in rural development, food security, poverty reduction and rural women's economic empowerment. Read more »

Markets	Climate Change
Rural women and men produce and add value to goods that they trade in local and export markets either as farmers, wage workers or as processors or vendors along different value chains. Read more »	Rural women are disproportionately impacted by climate change due to their social roles, to the discrimination they suffer and their poverty. Read more »

Enabling Policy Environments	Equal Participation of Rural Women in Decision-making
Policy environments enable rural women's empowerment when they address the gender disparities and discrimination that exist across different sectors, including agriculture, rural development, forestry, fisheries, trade, finance, education, health and environment. Read more »	Efforts to achieving the Millennium Development Goals will not be credible without the full and equal participation of rural women in decision-making. Read more »