Rural Women Farmers and Sustainable Livelihoods in Guyana

Rural women in agriculture are legitimized women as productive stakeholders through a process that documents the various roles have played in rural agriculture, the rural economy, and food security. Accounting for 43% of the world’s agricultural labor force, women are important actors in the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 2 particularly in reducing poverty especially among women, and improving food security. This quantitative study has shown that women have combined their roles in varying fields of agriculture using their income to take care of families while contributing to the economy and food security. Their contributions however are underrecognized due to the gender disparities in the investments made to their male peers in the same business. This may be due to the feminization of rural agriculture coupled with many women not having the literacies required to negotiate the demands of land or loan acquisition and the technical skills to move beyond subsistence agriculture. Notwithstanding, rural women farmers earn income that helps to guarantee the basic livelihoods of their families and contribute to community food security. However, rural women farmers also have limited financial and technical capabilities to conserve their surpluses and increase their economic well-being. Investments by national governments must be made to rural agriculture with specific recognition towards the advancement of women farmers.

Intervention of NGOs and ICTs in Mainstreaming Indian Farm Women in Agriculture

Agriculture sector employees are nearly 80% of all economically active women in India; 33% of agricultural labour force and 48% are self-employed farmers. As youth are migrating to urban places, to meet the demand of current and future population mainstreaming of women in agriculture is the need of hour. Farm women play an important role in Indian agriculture. Empowering farm women is a multi-dimensional task. If women farmers in developing countries like India, have equal access to productive resources as men, their productivity can be enhanced by 20-30 percent and agricultural production could be raised by 2.5-4.0 percent. To enrich women digitally, association of capacity-building partners such as Non-Governmental Organizations and ICT initiatives plays a vital role. Collaboration of NGOs and ICT for digitalized outreach of customized timely information to farm women helps in their multidimensional empowerment.

Women’s economic empowerment and COVID-19: the case of vulnerable women with intersectional identities in Indonesia and Vietnam

In recent decades, ASEAN has seen significant progress in gender equality and women’s empowerment. However, advances have not been even and vulnerable women with a range of intersectional identities have not benefited to the same extent as more privileged women or their male counterparts. Moreover, despite ASEAN’s much-lauded success in COVID-19 prevention and containment, the economic gains that had been achieved for women and girls are rapidly losing ground. Disruptions in the tourism sector, labour migration, and international trade have had a devastating economic impact on vulnerable populations, while innovations and new implementation approaches have provided some relief for low-income communities. This paper describes the COVID-19 economic fallout for women homeworkers and labour migrants engaged in informal jobs in Indonesia and low-income ethnic minority women in agriculture and tourism sectors in north-west Vietnam. It discusses early experiences and learning on pivoting projects, funded by the Government of Australia, to be COVID-19 responsive and contribute to longer-term recovery.

Women in Agriculture

It is observed that while woman share half the population, the share of women among total main workers has been declining. In view of this, the article studies the trend in women workforce in the agricultural sector from 2004–2005 to 2018–2019 and discusses reasons for the declining trend, various gender related challenges faced by women workforce in agriculture and policies which may be implemented to address the same. JEL Classification: J710, J160, J210