Country Gender Assessment Of The Agriculture And Rural Sector Lebanon

Without a systematic gender analysis at all levels of agricultural and rural policy, the role of women will remain officially unrecognized and undervalued. The production and collection of sex-disaggregated data in rural areas would significantly facilitate the development of projects adapted to the real needs of rural women. Gender mainstreaming across relevant institutions through specific trainings and awareness raising is similarly needed. The purpose of this assessment is to provide recommendations for the Government of Lebanon, its institutions and FAO.

This country gender assessment responds to the requirements of the FAO Policy on Gender Equality 2020–2030. By providing information and analysis on the gender dimensions of the agriculture and rural sector, it aims to support the formulation and implementation of gender-responsive policies, strategies, and projects at country level, in line with national development priorities and FAO’s mandate.

This Country Gender Assessment (CGA), conducted in Palestine’s West Bank and Gaza Strip, examines existing gender roles and gaps between men and women in agriculture and rural development and explores practical needs, strategic interests and perspectives on gender equality. The Assessment presents existing policies, strategies, plans and programmes and highlights the main challenges and opportunities for enhancing gender equality in agriculture and rural development. The CGA concludes by discussing the findings and providing a list of recommendations.

This Country Gender Assessment of Agriculture and the Rural Sector in the Republic of the Sudan aims to enhance the understanding of gender dimensions in the agriculture and rural sector in order to support the formulation and implementation of informed and evidence-based policies, programmes and services. The findings show that, despite the common issues facing Sudanese men and women in rural areas, the lack of gender equality in rural areas, and in the agricultural sector in particular, generally places women at a clear disadvantage.

The Country Gender Assessment of Agriculture and the Rural Sector report provides a gender perspective of the agricultural and rural sector of Papua New Guinea. The analysis provides an overview of the gender-based gaps and inequalities in access to and control over critical productive resources and opportunities. The methods used involved a two-tier approach where there was the review of literature related to women’s engagement in agriculture and the rural sector as well as, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with selected groups. The findings recognizes that agriculture is key for the country’s economy. However, there remains to be persisting challenges in creating an enabling environment for enhancing women’s participation in food value chains. Additionally, the disparities are obvious in access to and control over key agricultural resources. The rural women even though are major contributors to the economy, their rights are not properly recognized hence, are excluded systematically from access to decision-making. It is thereby concluded that the lack of influential gender sensitive leadership and coordination of the agricultural sector impede the empowerment of rural women and girls in the country. The recommendation include a gender and workplace policy developed for the agricultural sector. Importantly, this publication is a tool for FAO, the Government of Papua New Guinea and other development partners to mainstream gender into programming towards gender equality and the empowerment of rural women in Papua New Guinea.

In alignment with the FAO Policy on Gender Equality 2020-2030, the Assessment describes women’s and men’s specific roles and opportunities in agriculture, and explores the impact of existing gender inequalities on both women’s empowerment and rural development. Rural women are among the main contributors to food production and food processing in Guyana yet women’s access to both productive resources and services is limited. Furthermore, gaps between policy and implementation, and limited availability of sex disaggregated data and gender-sensitive indicators to inform sound policies and budgets have kept Guyanese women marginalized in many sectors. No baselines mean no measurement of progress in effectively implementing the array of commitments towards gender equality and women’s empowerment in agriculture, food security and nutrition, rural development and management of natural resources. In this Assessment, recommendations are formulated to progressively advance gender equality and support the empowerment of rural women through policy, programming, and organisational strengthening. Conducting an agriculture census and work to improve the systems of collection, production and analysis of age- and sex- disaggregated data pertaining to agriculture and rural development and promoting policy research and analysis to inform policies and strategic planning on gender equality and rural women’s empowerment are only some of the suggestions provided to improve the visibility of rural women’s contributions to their households and to the rural economy and address gender inequalities in the agriculture sector.

The objective of the Assessment is to analyse the agriculture and rural sectors from a gender perspective at the macro level (policy), meso level (institutional) and micro level (community and household). The Assessment seeks to identify gender inequalities in access to critical productive resources, assets, services and opportunities. The assessment looks at the priorities, needs and constraints of both women and men in agricultural and rural communities, and the gaps that exist in responding to these issues. It also provides recommendations and guidance to promote gender sensitivity in future programmes and projects, and identifies possible partners for gender-related activities. This Assessment is also intended to raise awareness about gender issues among policy-makers, FAO officers, NGOs and community-based organizations in Vanuatu. It provides background and gender-related information, and can be used as a tool to mainstream gender perspectives in future policies, projects and programmes in ways that empower rural women.

This study identifies value chain (VC) opportunities for women cooperatives, associations and individuals by adopting the FAO Gender-Sensitive Value Chain (GSVC) framework of analysis. In addition to the core and extended VC levels, as well as the national and global enabling environment. This framework adds two dimensions to be analyzed which are the individual and household levels, the areas in which gender inequalities frequently start from. Therefore, adding these two levels of analysis facilitates the systematic integration of gender equality into VC development programmes and projects. In addition to experts for each sub-sector, namely plant production, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture, animal production and agro-processing, this study included a gender consultant who played a major role in the different phases of the study. These included preparing and giving workshops to the sub-sector experts prior to the literature review and analysis, aligning their work within a gender framework, in addition to participating in the data collection phase, where the consultant revised the data collection tools prepared by the sub-sector experts for the Key Informant Interviews (KIIs), Survey and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and attended the majority of the KIIs. The consultant additionally revised the analysis of each sub-sector, included a gender assessment and assisted in the study’s reporting.