Food & Climate
Experience has shown that women farmers are better than men at growing nutritious crops and irrigation management, yet they do not own a large percentage of land worldwide, not exceeding 20%, and in Africa less than 5%.
Women farmers make up 38% of the agricultural workforce worldwide, and they represent more than half of the agricultural workers in 22 countries, which means that they play a crucial role in ensuring food and nutritional security.
Studies from Asia and Africa indicate that women farmers contribute to growing more than half of the food produced in the world, although the exact numbers are still under discussion, according to a report reviewed by the “Food & Climate” platform.
Women farmers in China
Women farmers play a major role in how water is used and managed in agricultural fields. While the relationship between gender and the conservation of natural resources is a delicate one, evidence from Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa shows that women implement more measures to protect the environment than men.
In China, for example, female rice farmers who receive training in low-carbon agricultural technologies and management practices are more likely to adopt these techniques than male farmers, according to a World Bank report.
When women participate in the irrigation sector, their involvement benefits entire communities. They are more likely than men to use irrigation to grow nutrient-rich crops, and they tend to spend a larger share of their income on their families’ education and health. This not only improves human capital development, but also helps lift families out of poverty.
Research also shows that when women participate in formal, high-level water resource institutions, the performance of those institutions improves significantly.
The same is true of community-level organizations. Countries such as Argentina, Azerbaijan, Egypt, and Ethiopia have seen positive results when women participate in water user associations. Their participation leads to better enforcement of rules, more effective fee collection, increased transparency, better conflict management, and more efficient use of water resources.
Women farmers face significant barriers to irrigated agriculture despite the benefits associated with it. The sector is traditionally a male-dominated sector, and women do not have equal access to irrigation technology, agricultural extension services, finance, and other vital resources needed to increase agricultural productivity.
Closing the gender gap in farm productivity and the wage gap in labor in the agri-food system could reduce global food insecurity by 2 percentage points, reducing the number of food-insecure people by an estimated 45 million.
Less than 5%
Globally, women account for only 20% of landowners, and in some regions, such as North Africa and West Asia, the share is less than 5%. Land ownership or control is essential for women’s access to resources and participation in irrigation decision-making, but many face legal and social barriers.
Women also have less participation in decision-making on irrigation infrastructure and service provision than men, and are underrepresented as staff and managers in high-level public irrigation institutions, and as members and decision-makers in community-level water user associations. In Ecuador, male members spoke for an average of 28 minutes during water user association meetings, compared to female members who spoke for only 3.5 minutes.
The World Bank’s recently launched Gender Strategy for 2024-2030 emphasizes improving human capital, expanding women’s economic opportunities, and engaging women in leadership as central to development and gender equality.
The same elements apply to irrigation; based on a review by World Bank experts of gender and irrigation studies, research, and experiences from the Bank’s engagement with governments around the world, addressing gender inequalities in irrigation requires action in five key areas, including legislation, employment opportunities, and infrastructure that serve women.
In 2014, the World Bank issued a report “Levelling the Field: Improving Opportunities for Women Farmers in Africa” delves into the scale and causes of the striking differences between how much men and women farmers produce in six African countries– Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda– which together make up more than 40% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s population.
The report, the first of its kind with access to better data and new approaches to analyzing gender gaps, revealed that the six countries profiled, that productivity on women’s farms is significantly lower per hectare compared to men, ranging from 13% in Uganda to 25% in Malawi.
Even though women make up a large share of Africa’s farmers, they tend to be locked out of land ownership, access to credit and productive farm inputs like fertilizers, pesticides and farming tools, support from extension services, and access to markets and other factors essential to their productivity.