Editing Agriculture (section)

==== Women in agriculture ====
Around the world, women make up a large share of the population employed in agriculture.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book |url=https://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/I7658EN |title=The State of Food and Agriculture 2017. Leveraging food systems for inclusive rural transformation |publisher=FAO |year=2017 |isbn=978-92-5-109873-8 |location=Rome |access-date=6 February 2023 |archive-date=14 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230314142843/https://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/I7658EN |url-status=live}}</ref> This share is growing in all developing regions except East and Southeast Asia where women already make up about 50 percent of the agricultural workforce.<ref name=":4" /> Women make up 47 percent of the agricultural workforce in sub-Saharan Africa, a rate that has not changed significantly in the past few decades.<ref name=":4" /> However, the [[Food and Agriculture Organization|Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations]] (FAO) posits that the roles and responsibilities of women in agriculture may be changing – for example, from subsistence farming to wage employment, and from contributing household members to primary producers in the context of male-out-migration.<ref name=":4" />

In general, women account for a greater share of agricultural employment at lower levels of economic development, as inadequate education, limited access to basic infrastructure and markets, high unpaid work burden and poor rural employment opportunities outside agriculture severely limit women's opportunities for off-farm work.<ref name=":13">{{Cite book |url=https://doi.org/10.4060/cc5060en |title=The status of women in agrifood systems - Overview |publisher=FAO |year=2023 |location=Rome |doi=10.4060/cc5060en |s2cid=258145984 |access-date=9 November 2023 |archive-date=16 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240216094829/https://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/cc5060en |url-status=live}}</ref>

Women who work in agricultural production tend to do so under highly unfavorable conditions. They tend to be concentrated in the poorest countries, where alternative livelihoods are not available, and they maintain the intensity of their work in conditions of climate-induced weather shocks and in situations of conflict. Women are less likely to participate as entrepreneurs and independent farmers and are engaged in the production of less lucrative crops.<ref name=":13" />

The gender gap in land productivity between female- and male managed farms of the same size is 24 percent. On average, women earn 18.4 percent less than men in wage employment in agriculture; this means that women receive 82 cents for every dollar earned by men. Progress has been slow in closing gaps in women's access to irrigation and in ownership of livestock, too.<ref name=":13" />

Women in agriculture still have significantly less access than men to inputs, including improved seeds, fertilizers and mechanized equipment. On a positive note, the gender gap in access to mobile internet in low- and middle-income countries fell from 25 percent to 16 percent between 2017 and 2021, and the gender gap in access to bank accounts narrowed from 9 to 6 percentage points. Women are as likely as men to adopt new technologies when the necessary enabling factors are put in place and they have equal access to complementary resources.<ref name=":13" />