Women Food Producers In Guyana

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.