October 15th is International Day of Rural Women.
International Day of Rural Women was launched as an empowerment and educational campaign in 1995 during a UN Conference on Women. It is now celebrated in more than 100 countries around the world. In honor of this day, I’ve created an album to recognize the women of the rural communities with which Goods for Good works.
Click HERE to check it out.
Some interesting points from a WomensWatch article about the critical role rural women play in their communities and the challenges they face:
- 428 million women work in the agricultural sector around the world.
- In sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, women produce over 80% of foodstuffs and in Southeast Asia, women account for up to 90% of the labor that goes into rice cultivation.
- Women in agriculture are less likely than men to have access to land, equipment, training, credit, and other tools that could help them significantly improve their food securities and livelihood.
- Because many of the tasks these women perform (clearing land, sowing seeds, hauling wood, etc.) are difficult to quantify and due to longstanding biases which undervalue their work, many of their essential contributions go unnoticed.
- This lack of recognition often leads to other problems such as a loss of livelihood when sexual violence leaves them afraid to return to the fields.
- “Narrowing the gap between the general perception of rural women and their actual contributions and needs is essential to reducing hunger and improving lives in rural, developing areas, which are home to 70 percent of the world’s poor and hungry men, women and children,” says Eve Crowley, Principal Advisor in the Gender, Equity and Rural Employment Division.
