Thursday, March 28, 2024
Chitra Deshpande, Adviser to the Vice-President of IFAD, is Founder of the Women’s Informal Network (WIN), an informal professional network of women working in international development to promote women’s leadership and managerial capacities.
Women worldwide carry the double burden of domestic labor and income-generating work outside the household. Despite working typically 12-13 hours per week more than men in developing countries in Africa and Asia, working women usually go unrecognized. Women in rural areas spend more of their time on domestic chores such as collecting water and firewood, preparing food, transporting goods and caring for children, the elderly and sick. They also work on family farms – spending on average three hours more per day than men on unpaid agricultural work. Equitable access to decent employment opportunities for women is critical to the well-being of their families and communities. Yet most rural women are either unpaid family workers, self-employed or hold precarious jobs for low pay.
In the United Nations, many women are committed to removing the barriers that women face in developing countries. The Joint-Programme on Accelerating Progress towards the Economic Empowerment of Rural Women (RWEE) is one example of how women from different UN agencies – FAO, IFAD, UN Women and WFP – are securing rural women’s livelihoods and rights in seven countries. Through the efforts of many women and men, but particularly – Clare Bishop-Sambrook and Beatrice Gerli of IFAD, Susan Kaaria and Libor Stloukal in FAO, Venge Nyirongo of UN Women, Veronique Sainte-Luce of WFP, and Azzurra Chiarini the Global Coordinator – RWEE has supported over 22,500 women and their households by enabling 2,150 women to access financial services; 5,200 to receive business development support; and training almost 4,000 women in improved agricultural technologies. As a smallholder farmer in Nepal, Chandra Kala Thapa faces many barriers to improving her agricultural productivity and income. RWEE provided her with seeds, fertilizers and equipment, and helped her access credit. Engaging the men in the community has resulted in Chandra’s husband helping her with the household work and farming. The increased income from diversifying her crops to fruits and vegetables has allowed her to educate her sons and pay for medical care. As President of her Women’s Farmers’ Group, Chandra also brings women together to find solutions to farming and family problems.
When you invest in a woman, you invest in a community. Therefore, to fully unlock a woman’s potential, it is critical to include her family. IFAD uses household methodologies to promote equitable intra-household relations and shared decision-making. In IFAD-funded projects in Uganda, originally led by the Country Programme Manager Marian Bradley with the support of IFAD’s gender team, the household mentoring approach was used to assist Biribawa, a married woman with nine children, who struggled to support her family. A trained mentor helped Biribawa and her family formulate a vision and outline the steps to achieve it. Today her children are in school and, through improved farming and mat weaving, they have realized the family vision to build a permanent house.
In order for women working in the UN to help women in developing countries, they also need a supportive work environment to take care of their own families. In her former positions at FAO and IFAD, Theresa Panuccio was instrumental in establishing on-site child-care centres which improved women’s work-life balance. As we know from our projects, on-site child care can significantly improve women’s productivity by reducing absenteeism and the travel time to collect children.
Women worldwide are daughters, mothers, and wives as well as workers – farmers, entrepreneurs, laborers and experts. To unleash our full potential, we need to join together and support one another to care for our families and perform our jobs to the benefit of our communities, societies and countries.
This article is part of a series of stories and op-eds launched by IPS on the occasion of this year’s International Women’s Day on March 8.