‘Close gender inequality gaps in resource allocation’
A peasant farmer, Madam Victoria Adongo, has called for the closing of gender inequality gaps in resource allocation between women farmers and their male counterparts as the international community marks the International Day of Rural Women today, October 15.
According to her, rural women the world over, played a major role in ensuring food security and in the development and stability of the rural areas, yet, with little or no status, they frequently lacked the power to secure land rights or to access vital services such as credit, inputs, extension services, training and education.
“Their vital contribution to society goes largely unnoticed,” she said.
Media forum
At a forum organised by the Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF) to sensitise media personnel to the importance of rural women to national development, Madam Adongo called for laws to increase women’s access to land, loans and agriculture inputs.
Madam Adongo, who is also the Executive Director of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG), in a presentation on ‘access to agricultural resources by smallholder women farmers”, identified that women farmers did not have easy access to such facilities including the government’s subsidised fertilisers.
Women farmers, she said, faced problems such as appropriate technologies, inadequate access to social services, exploitation by middlemen (market queens), access to extension officers, access to storage, among other facilities.
A representative of Oxfam, Naana Nkansah Agyekum, said the media sensitisation programme was part of a programme dubbed the “Grow Campaign” which advocated policies to grow agriculture.
The campaign, she said, was part of the International Day of Rural Women aimed at giving a voice to rural woman.
Giving a presentation on the gender perspective on land ownership and control in Ghana, Ms Lois Addo of WiLDAF, said most women did not take steps to own land saying they were comfortable working on their husbands’ farms.
She said according to tradition, women were not allowed to inherit land as it was believed that they would marry and move out of the family.
Honouring women farmers
The idea of honouring rural women with a special day was put forward by international NGOs at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. It was suggested that October 15 be celebrated as “World Rural Women’s Day,” on the eve of World Food Day, in order to highlight the role played by rural women in food production and food security.
Statistics from the UN Women indicate that the majority of women who depend on natural resources and agriculture for their livelihoods, make up over a quarter of the total world population. In developing countries, rural women represent approximately 43 per cent of the agricultural labour force, and produce, process and prepare much of the food available, thereby giving them primary responsibility for food security.
