Topic Guide: Women’s empowerment in a changing agricultural and rural context

The title of this Topic Guide is Women’s Empowerment in a Changing Agricultural and Rural Context. Ensuring growth is inclusive, and benefits girls and women is central to DFID’s strategic framework to deliver on economic development (DFID, 2014b). It is one of five pillars of strategic focus. The framework demands an emphasis on improving the following for poor women and poor men: • access to markets • access to finance • improving land and property markets • increasing employment opportunities and access to jobs through supporting nondiscriminatory labour market policies. DFID’s Agriculture and Women Report (2014a) 1 frames questions around agricultural growth and women. Although the agricultural workforce as a whole is shrinking, agriculture remains one of the most important sources of employment for women in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Evidence indicates that agricultural transformation and male out-migration are creating new wage employment opportunities for women in agriculture. Non-traditional value chains are opening up opportunities for women in high value export crops requiring labour intensive production techniques (DFID, 2014a, pg. 13). However DFID (2014a) points to much evidence around gender related constraints that must yet be overcome.