New Delhi: Prioritizing measuring women’s empowerment in agrifood systems can help design and evaluate projects aimed at improving gender equality and resource access, ADB said while listing four ways to measure such empowerment. Women face significant gender disparities in agrifood systems due to entrenched gender inequalities which is a major barrier to progress on sustainable development goals, an blog by the organisation read.
The blog further noted the crucial role women play in agrifood systems and yet they continue to face disparities in wages, assets, and information. These inequalities have a detrimental impact on the region’s agriculture sector, as highlighted in the FAO’s 2023 publication on the status of women in agrifood systems.
Gender roles and power dynamics have a substantial impact on the agricultural sector, which is dominated by small family farms, it noted. According to ADB, farm decisions on crop selection, work distribution, technological use, and participation in value chains are all influenced by broader household choices on finances, food, work, and care responsibilities.