Rural women represent one quarter of the global population and produce the majority of the food consumed around the world. Yet despite their numbers and the contribution they make to the wellbeing of societies everywhere, this sector remains disproportionately exposed to economic and social rights violations.
The critical importance of empowering rural women to claim their rights is evidenced in the United Nations statistics about this sector. Although 60 per cent of employed women in Sub-Saharan Africa work in agriculture, they account for just 15 per cent of landholders. Similarly unbalanced figures for South Asia, and indeed other parts of the world, underline the urgency of confronting such inequalities, for the sake of both women themselves and society at large. It is well documented that when more income is channeled to women, indicators on child nutrition, health and education all improve. As things stand, however, women and girls account for 60 per cent of the world???s chronically hungry people.
With these challenges in mind, a broad spectrum of government officials, United Nations experts, civil society workers and rural women from all corners of the globe have been meeting in New York for the 56th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). The meeting at the United Nations headquarters reviewed progress in the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, agreed in the Chinese capital in 1995, which established a global consensus on priorities for the achievement of gender equality. Widely regarded as the most important forum on women???s interests, the latest CSW meeting came at a critical time, with the aftershocks of the food and financial crises continuing to be felt among vulnerable communities around the world. In this regard, the importance of ensuring full participation of rural women in the design and implementation of crisis response strategies should not be underestimated.
The event also highlighted much of the common ground between women???s development and the broader economic and social rights agenda. In its draft conclusions, the Commission emphasized that the empowerment of rural women could play a crucial role in eradicating hunger and poverty, while also furthering the cause of sustainable development and accelerating progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. It also underlined the importance of ensuring that rural women have a meaningful voice in decision-making bodies, so as to be able to hold public and private actors to account, and the need for concrete measures to provide them with access to the highest attainable standards of health and education.
Non-discrimination is one of the core principles underpinning provisions set out in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, while the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women meanwhile contains important provisions for the protection of economic and social rights. Indeed the complementary and mutually reinforcing nature of women???s empowerment, economic and social rights and broader development is well documented.
Depsite the potential of such synergies, and significant advances in women???s status and wellbeing in recent decades, the promise of meaningful equality and an adequate standard of living remains far off for many millions of rural women. Two-thirds of the world???s 800 million illiterate people are women, while men???s wages remain higher than women???s in almost all countries. The disadvantages experienced by women are exacerbated by urban-rural imbalances, with women living in rural areas suffering higher levels of domestic violence and less access to health care services.