Women as Foundation for Rural Development Policy

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, rural women are responsible for half of the world’s food production. They produce 60–80 percent of the food in most developing countries. They are also the main producers of the world’s staple crops—rice,  heat and maize—which provide up to 90 percent of the rural poor’s food intake.

As such, women are fundamental for guaranteeing food security and household maintenance, not only for their own families but also for the community in general. And they constitute a strong potential foundation for rural development policy.Yet many rural women are illiterate and lack the knowledge to take advantage of investment and development opportunities.

Their efforts to initiate or expand income-generating activities are typically constrained by limited access to credit and other financial services, such as savings and deposits. Despite recent efforts to increase rural women’s participation in financial markets (for example, via microcredit programs), women are still disproportionately credit constrained and unbanked.

How can illiteracy among women be eliminated and the quality of their education improved ? How can knowledge transfers to rural women be facilitated? How can women be financially supported through improved access to credit and finance? And how can the world be encouraged to focus systematic attention on the issue of empowering rural women?