This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, from
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A new report says
if women farmers had the same rights as men, more could be done to reduce world
hunger. The report, "Empowering Women in Agriculture," is from the anti-hunger
group Bread for the World. Bread for the World says equal access to agricultural
resources would help increase food security and economic growth. Faustine
Wabwire is the group's foreign assistance specialist. She says women constitute
half of the agricultural labor force in not just Africa, but the developing
countries as a whole. "And when you think of Africa alone," she says, "it's more
than sixty percent of the total agricultural labor force being provided by
women." The report says in most countries, women working in rural areas are more
likely than men to hold seasonal, part-time and low-wage jobs. They also receive
less pay for the same work. Ms. Wabwire says women farmers often cannot get
seeds, fertilizer, proper tools, credit and, especially, land. She says in most
of Africa, about eighty percent of the population is living in rural areas and
they subsist on agriculture. Women make up sixty percent of the agricultural
labor force and yet they lack access to resources, she says. She says land is
one good example: less than twenty percent of all landholders are women. This is
often because of legal as well as cultural reasons. She says women who have lost
their husbands may have no legal rights over their land. The only way to keep
the land, she says, is to marry, say, the brother of the dead husband.
Restrictions like these, she says, "continue to impede women's ability to fully
enjoy their human rights." However, Ms. Wabwire says women in agriculture are
getting more attention these days. For example, Kenya's new constitution gives
women the right to own land. But she says there is still a long way to go. Bread
for the World is urging the United States government to increase development
assistance, or at least not to decrease it. She says Feed the Future, the U.S.
government's agriculture aid program, is helping to elevate the status of women.
But Ms. Wabwire says more African governments must recognize the major role that
women play in agriculture and elsewhere. Just how much could hunger be reduced
if women had equal access to agricultural resources? The report estimates that
hunger could be reduced for an extra one hundred to one hundred fifty million
people. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal. (Adapted from a radio
program broadcast 10Apr2012)
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