We celebrate this Saturday, October 15, the International Day of Rural Women, established by the United Nations General Assembly on December 18, 2007 to recognize the decisive role and contribution of rural women in the ...
We celebrate this Saturday, October 15, the International Day of Rural Women, established by the United Nations General Assembly on December 18, 2007 to recognize the decisive role and contribution of rural women in promoting agricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty.
According to the UN, women perform most of the agricultural tasks in the world. However, the invisibility of women in rural areas remains a reality. Most women, although they represent up to 70% of the agricultural workforce, do not own or control any land. Rural women own less than 10% of the property in developed countries and 2% in developing territories.
The celebration of this day allows us to remember the contribution of rural women to the socioeconomic development of the Canary Islands. Women in rural areas have been farmers, ranchers, cheese makers, weavers, basket makers, potters, and a long etcetera. However, their personal development and socioeconomic position have been limited by the weight of gender roles, which led women to the private sphere, to the domestic, to the invisible, to non-recognition.
The latest Survey on the Structure of Agricultural Holdings shows that of the total number of holders of agricultural holdings in the Canary Islands, only 23% are women. With respect to heads of agricultural holdings, women represent 20%. Likewise, the highest percentage of female owners corresponds to the smallest farms, which further undermines the economic situation of women in rural areas.
The invisibility and lack of recognition of rural women in productive work are still present. The lack of recognition of the work carried out by women on family farms, considering it a mere "help", affects the self-esteem and social position of rural women, in addition to depriving them of the benefits inherent to paid work. Women have proven to be a very flexible workforce, since on many occasions they not only work on the family farm, but also combine it with employment in another sector of activity, as well as with the care of sons and daughters and with domestic work. It is also important to advance in co-responsibility, equality is built in an important way in couple relationships, we cannot advance in a sustainable social model if domestic and care tasks continue to fall mostly on women.
In recent years, important legislative advances have been made in terms of equality, such as the recent approval of the Law on shared ownership of agricultural holdings, which implies the legal and economic recognition of the participation of women in agricultural activity and puts an end to a situation of historical discrimination and invisibility of their work on the family farm. However, we also have to move towards a greater presence of women in decision-making positions; rural women actively participate in the life of their towns as community dynamizers and, nevertheless, their presence is less in agricultural or business organizations or in development groups.
Despite the difficulties, rural women are showing a great capacity for innovation and actively contribute to local development, so it is our obligation to support and promote dynamization processes. In this sense, the Canarian Institute of Equality is preparing the Strategic Plan for Equality of the Government of the Canary Islands, complying with the mandate of the Canarian Law of Equality, which states that the public authorities of the Canary Islands will integrate the gender perspective in rural development actions, guaranteeing that these interventions contemplate the needs of women, allow their full participation with equity in rural development processes and contribute to a real equality of opportunities between women and men.
Our objective is to gather the participation of organizations with an impact in the field of rural development, associations of rural women, as well as the Ministry responsible for the matter, in such a way that the Plan can reflect their priorities and needs, in such a way that it allows us to build a new model of socioeconomic relations in rural areas, sustainable from the point of view of gender equality.
*Elena Máñez Rodríguez, director of the Canarian Institute of Equality
