Women’s economic empowerment is a necessary step to promote women’s rights and achieve gender equality. Throughout the last decades, women have been entering the labor market and, despite the still existing inequalities in terms of wages and opportunities, there are many sectors in which women have achieved great visibility. This is not the case of agriculture and livestock. Currently, women working in rural areas must face a double burden, one linked to the fact of being a woman and one linked to the difficulties of life in the countryside. This is why it is essential to integrate the gender mainstreaming in the national and European agriculture policies.
When more women work, economies grow. “Women’s economic empowerment boosts productivity, increases economic diversification and income equality in addition to other positive development outcomes,” states a publication of United Nations Women, which also points out that conversely, it is estimated that gender gaps cost the economy some 15% of GDP. The same applies to the rural sector. A third of women’s employment globally is in agriculture and yet, women farmers have significantly less access to, control over, and ownership of land compared to their male counterparts. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, women just represent 12.8% of the world’s agricultural landholders.
We should also notice that, even if agriculture remains the main employment sector for women in low-income and lower-middle-income countries, it accounts for a huge part of the population in the western world as well. Within the European Union, in 2016 women working in agriculture accounted for 35% of the total working population in the sector and more than 40% in some Member States like Austria (45 %), Romania (43 %) Poland, Greece, and Slovenia (41 % in each).
Here is some data about the discrimination affecting women in rural areas in the EU. On the one hand, women farmers control far less of the land, only 12% comparing to 61% controlled by man (the remaining 28% is held by 'legal entities'). On the other hand, the average farm size for farms managed by women is 6.4 hectares while it is 14.4 hectares for farms managed by men. And in terms of output per holding, the average for women was less than €12,000 ($13,589) in 2013 and nearly €40,000 ($45,290) for men.
Currently, EU countries are obliged to analyze the situation of women in rural areas and take the results into account to design their rural development programmes. However, there are no specific funds aimed at women directly, which is quite questionable considering the data just exposed. I interviewed Teresa López, the president of the Spanish Federation of Rural Women's Associations (Fademur) to know more about the challenging life of women working in rural areas.
Are women working in the rural world invisible to society?
They are in many cases. For instance, there are many women working in the family farm, so even though they work as much as any other person, the legal status of their work is “family assistance”, and therefore they do not have their own income. The solution, from our point of view, is to promote the shared ownership of the land. There is a law, which was approved in Spain in 2011, to consider women’s work in family farms as real employment, but there has not been a real implementation yet.
Which are the biggest challenges that women living and working in rural areas must face?
Women in the rural world face many inequalities. Currently, about a third of the sector is occupied by women but the data indicate that women's farms are smaller, less profitable and have more difficulties accessing credit and innovation.
There is a significant inequality regarding the labor market in terms of access to paid employment and, therefore, many women need to choose self-employment, with all the difficulties it entails. Starting up a business in rural areas is much more difficult than in a city, there are many deficiencies in public services, communication, technologies and access to financing. Actually, there is a large part of the rural world in financial exclusion, especially women.
Regarding public services, there have been many cuts since the economic crisis, which have accentuated the already existing shortcomings in education, health, and transport. In addition, there is another consequence for women. When the Government does not supply the basic services, the most frequent thing is that women are the ones in charge of replacing the State in its duty of care. When a school cafeteria in a village is closed, it is women who organize themselves to feed the children and when a health center is closed, it is women who take care of the sick.
What is the impact of the digital divide for women in rural areas?
Around five million people in Spain have a very bad or none access to broadband and this is a reality that affects half of the rural population. New technologies can help to solve the differences between the rural and urban world when promoting projects, providing services, offering job opportunities, offering higher profitability, offering better training and education, and it can even contribute to improving people relationships. I believe it is essential to put an end to the digital divide so that women can have more opportunities.
The population of the rural world should not be treated as second-class citizens, and women in the rural world should not be forced to behave like heroines, they should be able to live a simple and dignified life.
How does the European Union address gender discrimination within the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)?
First, we must point out that there is a gap in the amount of aid received by women with respect to male farm owners of around 36%. This difference stems from the number and size of women's farms, which are fewer and smaller. This is why we claim a CAP with a gender mainstreaming. However, the truth is that there are no specific funds aimed at women on farms with the EU.
Currently, the CAP offers the possibility to the Member States to distribute the funds taking into account the gender gap in opportunities, but no country has yet launched a specific program. Considering that the EU has recognized and published data on existing gender inequality in farms, it should integrate the gender mainstreaming into the CAP instead of letting each country decide whether to do so.