International Day of Rural Women. Despite playing a key role in food security, women farmers rarely receive any recognition for their work.
Did you know that women farmers produce half of the food in the world? And yet, despite playing a key role in the food security of households, rarely receive any recognition for this work. Moreover, many do not receive a salary and face innumerable obstacles to have access to a piece of land, to credit, technology, education, health and skilled labor. An invisibility and injustice that occurs despite differences in both the South and the North.
In Africa, as in many other continents, women do not control productive resources and often cannot become owners of land nor participate in decision making. Gender differences are such that in many cases they do not control the income generated either.
Nearly always it is men who decide what will be grown, the amount of the harvest allocated to family consumption or to market sales.
As long as gender discrimination continues in national laws and inequality prevails in the formation of public policies, as long as social taboos against women endure and their key role in family farming is not recognised, they are not the target of investments, their leadership is not promoted: the contribution of women to development, even though it is key, will continue to be invisible and remain in second place.