International Day for Rural Women 2021: History, Significance and All You Need to Know

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International Day for Rural Women focuses on gender equality and empowering women in rural areas. For this year, the theme is “Rural women cultivating good food for all"

International Day for Rural Women is celebrated on October 15. The day focuses on gender equality and empowering women in rural areas. For this year, the theme is “Rural women cultivating good food for all”. Highlighting the purpose of this day, United Nations said that it “recognises the critical role and contribution of rural women, including indigenous women, in enhancing agricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty.”

According to a report by the United Nations, 40% of the total agricultural labour force in developing countries comprises women. In South American countries, the figure is around 20% whereas, in Asia and Africa, more than 50% of the agricultural labour force is women.

But even after comprising almost half the workforce, these women do not get equal rights and share as their male counterparts. They face discrimination in access to resources, equal pay, participation in decision making, land and livestock ownership, credit and market for their farms.

The report further stated that providing these women with equal opportunities can increase agricultural production by 2.5 to 4 percent. It can also reduce the number of people with malnourishment from 12 to 17 percent.

International Day for Rural Women 2021: Rural Women Cultivating Good For All

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and increasing environmental crisis have deepened the crisis of food insecurity in many parts of the world, despite nature being capable enough to produce sufficient and good quality food for everyone. The recent report by UN Women states that in 2020, 23.7 billion people could not have access to adequate food. This means that around 20% or 3.2 billion people more were pushed towards hunger. Among these people, the group which faced most of the brunt were rural women and children.