Agriculture is the most important economic sector in Bangladesh where women are playing a vital role. Women are the backbone of the development of rural and national economies. They comprise 43% of the world’s agricultural labour force. According to Agriculture Information Service, there are about 1.10 crore women engaged in agricultural sector, which also includes forestry and fisheries, in Bangladesh. Despite their contribution, there is no mention of their recognition in any institutional statistics in Bangladesh. Even, there is no evaluation of a large number of females, who are engaged in the sector.
Women agricultural workers are facing wage discrimination. They are being deprived in various ways. Women get less access to land, water bodies, agricultural and infrastructure facilities, productive resources, technical and technological opportunities. Men get preference in the decision making process.
They lack modern training and equipment, credit facilities and are deprived of getting fair price of their products. As the contribution of women farmers are not recognized in our GDP, the real picture of the country’s production has not been reflected in national economy. Hence, women farmers face discrimination at different tiers regarding the question of recognition and equality.
Our Agriculture Policy 2018 and other relevant policies proved inadequate to establish their rights in the sector, said the rights activists, adding that empowering and investing in rural women has, over the years, resulted in significant improvements in productivity and rural livelihoods.
Women are typically the providers of food for their families and local communities. Access to healthy food is important for the health of the community as a whole which is why agricultural education for women is important, because it is promising better health outcomes for communities in which farming is the main source of food.
All concerned, including government organizations, should come together with one objective: to improve and support rural women’s rights. This will also promote sustainable development, strengthen women’s leadership, improve food and nutrition security and help increase rural women’s incomes.
It is time to bridge the gender yield gap, because it will boost food and nutrition security and increase agricultural output. This is the journey we must make to reduce hunger. We must undertake joint efforts to create favourable conditions in agricultural areas, including the reinforcement of road networks for the transportation of produce from production areas where rural women work, as well as the processing and commercialization of such products.
There is a need to drop policies which are less favourable to women agricultural workers, focusing on the appreciation of their role as producers of wealth and strengthening the network of public services in rural areas, including health, education, and welfare services, as well as establishing policies that combat the asymmetries that prevent rural women from being protected against the effects of climate change.
The training of rural women is very important, especially with the adoption of modern agricultural techniques that are tailored to local conditions and that use natural resources in a sustainable manner, with a view to achieving economic development without degrading the environment.
It requires the dissemination of the results of research carried out by experts - including those on agro-ecological techniques -with a view to increasing rural women’s production levels.
To this effect, it must be pointed out that agro-ecological practices require the provision of certain public goods, such as extension services, storage facilities, rural infrastructure (roads, electricity, and information and communication technologies), access to markets and access to credit, as well as supporting organizations and farmer cooperatives. The government has a key role to play in supporting the access to land, credit, water, seeds and other necessary supports for rural women who are involved in the agricultural sector.
Giving supports to rural women is a way of breaking the vicious cycle that leads to rural poverty and to the expansion of slums in the cities, where the poor get poorer. Development strategies should consider rural women as the epicentre, paying special attention to their social skills both within and without agriculture sector.
It is extremely important to recognize the role that rural women play and the contribution, giving them greater political and financial support and involving them in the training and conducting of development programmes that enhance women's role in agricultural production.
It also requires giving priority to women’s access to education, information, science and technology, and extension services to enable improving women’s access, ownership and control of economic and natural resources. To ensure such access, ownership, appropriate credit schemes, and the reinforcement of women’s organizations and networks are needed.
A number of other changes will strengthen women’s contributions to agricultural production and sustainability.
These include support for public services and investment in rural areas in order to improve women’s living and working conditions; giving priority to technological development policies targeting rural and farm women’s needs and recognizing their knowledge, skills and experience in the production of food and the conservation of biodiversity; and assessing the negative effects and risks of farming practices and technology, including pesticides on women’s health, and taking measures to reduce use and exposure.
If we are to better recognize women as integral to sustainable development, it is critical to ensure gender balance at all levels.
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 2) stressed on zero hunger with a call for ending hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. SDG (5) stressed on gender equality, calling for achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. The two SDGs could come to fruition in the same solution: an investment in women within agriculture.
Empowering women support a basic human right, but the advancement of female agricultural workers can also lead to improved agricultural productivity, food security, and nutrition.
Women are falling behind men regarding yields due to a gender gap in access to productive resources.
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) stated that equalizing access to productive resources between female and male farmers can increase agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5 to four percent.
With studies forecasting a 100- to 110-percent increase in global crop demand from 2005 to 2050, the additional impact of female farmers could play an important role in serving a hungry world.
The 2012 World Development Report stated that in agriculture, gender differences in productivity almost always disappear when access to land and productive inputs are taken into account.
In her remarks to the U.S. Department of State, former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanie Verveer reported that if women were provided the same resources as men, they could increase their individual yields by 20 to 30 percent. This, in turn, would improve agricultural production in the developing world and reduce the number of undernourished people by 100 to 150 million globally.
It is needed to give state recognition to the women engaged in the sector along with necessary supports, including right to land, by the government. Measures should be taken for ensuring priority to women in the agriculture-related committees across the country. Women should get priority regarding subsidy, loan, dealership, agriculture card and land for share-cropping.
If necessary steps are taken to ensure those and remove the barriers, faced by women in the sector, it can generate productive gains, which would hopefully accelerate our development.
The writer works for an online
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