Change in the Making: Progress Reports on CGIAR Gender Research: Issue No. 1. Toward gender-equitable control over productive assets and resources

Abstract

Agriculture in the developing world faces formidable challenges, which range from increased food demand to climate change impacts, and whose scope and complexity are evolving rapidly. The opportunities to address these challenges through collaborative research are also considerable, however, and provide grounds for optimism that renewed efforts in agricultural science can succeed. Yet, one especially debilitating limitation of farming in developing countries – the absence of gender equity – threatens to stifle the impacts of agricultural research on every level – from seed delivery and livestock value chains to the management of whole rural landscapes. According to estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (FAO, 2011), roughly half the people engaged in smallholder farming are women and, because of unequal control over assets and resources, they produce and preserve far less than they could. Unless ways are found to change this situation, it is hard to imagine how agriculture can rise fully to the challenges that lie ahead