Each 15 October is celebrated as United Nations (UN) International Day of Rural Women.
The Thammasat University Library owns several books about different aspects of the life and work of rural women.
As the UN website explains,
Building rural women’s resilience in the wake of COVID-19
Women and girls are disadvantaged in this pandemic, a problem aggravated in rural areas. Rural women, with a crucial role in agriculture, food security and nutrition, already face struggles in their daily lives. Now, since COVID-19 and their unique health needs in remote areas, they are less likely to have access to quality health services, essential medicines, and vaccines. Restrictive social norms and gender stereotypes can also limit rural women’s ability to access health services. Furthermore, a lot of rural women suffer from isolation, as well as the spread of misinformation, and a lack of access to critical technologies to improve their work and personal life.
Despite all of that, rural women have been at the front lines of responding to the pandemic even as their unpaid care and domestic work increased under lockdowns.
We need measures to alleviate the care burden and better redistribute it between women and men, and between families and public/commercial services, especially in the most marginalized remote villages . We need to advocate for sufficient infrastructure and services (water, health, electricity, etc.) to support women’s productive and unpaid care and domestic work, which is exacerbated by the crisis.
The pandemic has also heightened the vulnerability of rural women’s rights to land and resources. Discriminatory gender norms and practices impede women’s exercise of land and property rights in most countries and COVID-19 widows risk disinheritance. Women’s land tenure security is also threatened as unemployed migrants return to rural communities, increasing pressure on land and resources and exacerbating gender gaps in agriculture and food security.
Gender-responsive investments in rural areas have never been more critical.
The theme for this International Day of Rural Women is “Building rural women’s resilience in the wake of COVID-19,” to create awareness of these women’s struggles, their needs, and their critical and key role in our society.
The Invaluable Contribution of Rural Women to Development
The crucial role that women and girls play in ensuring the sustainability of rural households and communities, improving rural livelihoods and overall wellbeing, has been increasingly recognized. Women account for a substantial proportion of the agricultural labour force, including informal work, and perform the bulk of unpaid care and domestic work within families and households in rural areas. They make significant contributions to agricultural production, food security and nutrition, land and natural resource management, and building climate resilience.
Even so, women and girls in rural areas suffer disproportionately from multi-dimensional poverty. While extreme poverty has declined globally, the world’s 1 billion people, who continue to live in unacceptable conditions of poverty, are heavily concentrated in rural areas. Poverty rates in rural areas across most regions are higher than those in urban areas. Yet smallholder agriculture produces nearly 80% of food in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and supports the livelihoods of some 2.5 billion people. Women farmers may be as productive and enterprising as their male counterparts but are less able to access land, credit, agricultural inputs, markets, and high-value agrifood chains and obtain lower prices for their crops.
Structural barriers and discriminatory social norms continue to constrain women’s decision-making power and political participation in rural households and communities. Women and girls in rural areas lack equal access to productive resources and assets, public services, such as education and health care, and infrastructure, including water and sanitation, while much of their labour remains invisible and unpaid, even as their workloads become increasingly heavy due to the out-migration of men. Globally, with few exceptions, every gender and development indicator for which data are available reveals that rural women fare worse than rural men and urban women and that they disproportionately experience poverty, exclusion, and the effects of climate change.
Rural women make up one quarter of the world’s population, working as farmers, wage earners, and entrepreneurs.
Fewer than 20% of landholders worldwide are women. In rural areas, the gender pay gap is as high as 40%.
Reducing the gap in labor force participation rates between men and women by 25% by the year 2025 could raise global gross domestic product (GDP) by 3.9%, according to UN projections.
If women in rural areas had the same access to agricultural assets, education, and markets as men, agricultural production could be increased, and the number of hungry people reduced by 100-150 million.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has published advisories on Empowering Women in the Rural Economy:
Women play important roles in the rural economy as farmers, wage earners and entrepreneurs. They also take responsibility for the well-being of the members of their families, including food provision and care for children and the elderly. Rural women’s unpaid work, particularly in poor households, often includes collecting wood and water. Women from indigenous and grassroots communities are often also custodians of traditional knowledge, which is key for their communities’ livelihoods, resilience and culture. Yet, women in rural areas face constraints in engaging in economic activities because of gender-based discrimination and social norms, disproportionate involvement in unpaid work, and unequal access to education, healthcare, property, and financial and other services. They are also disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of environmental disasters and climate change. Promoting and ensuring gender equality, and empowering rural women through decent work and productive employment, not only contributes to inclusive and sustainable economic growth, but also enhances the effectiveness of poverty reduction and food security initiatives, as well as climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. The International Labour Organization (ILO)’s Decent Work Agenda offers an integrated framework for rural women’s empowerment, underpinned by international labour standards, social dialogue and the recognition that rural women play a key role in climate action.
The UN Women website observes about Thailand:
Thailand has legally advanced women’s rights and gender equality through its ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1985 and its Optional Protocol in 2000, endorsed the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA) in 1995, and committed to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. Thailand has made significant efforts to integrate the international principles and instruments into legislation and policy, evident in the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand B.E. 2560 (2017), which clearly specifies that ‘men and women shall enjoy equal rights’. The Gender Equality Act 2015, which was enacted in 2015, established a Committee to Promote Gender Equality (CPGE) to enact the Act’s legal policies and mechanisms to advance gender equality. In addition, the Women Development Strategy (2017-2021), developed by the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security, sets out goals, objectives and targets in the area of gender equality which will be steering tools for effective budget allocations… In rural areas, many women in Thailand remain affected by poverty, discrimination and exploitation. They are largely concentrated in insecure and vulnerable jobs in the informal sector, including in agriculture and as own account and contributing family workers, with only a small minority in senior positions. According to the Association for the Promotion of the Status of Women, discriminatory practices against women still exist in many rural areas in Thailand such as employment practices, unfair treatment of women workers, and access to resources. More specifically, there is a lack of policy to promote economic empowerment and access to financial services to disadvantaged groups of women. Only 13.67% of women have borrowed from a financial institution. Under the 20-year Master Plan, Thailand aims to maximize the use of digital technology across all socio-economic activities. Many women in rural areas, however, are not able to fully benefit from progress in information technology as the number of internet users in rural areas are on the low side and online business skills need to be improved. Additionally, privatization and development policies translate into more difficulties for women, especially those living in rural or conflict affected areas, in gaining access to natural and economic resources.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)