The Borlaug Blog

Women, especially in developing countries, are key to eradicating hunger, malnutrition, and poverty. The role of women is pivotal in agricultural production and in food security. They are the primary farmers and producers in a large part of the world. They produce sixty percent to eighty percent of the food in most developing countries and are responsible for half of the world's food production.

An average of 43 percent of agricultural labour in the developing world is women, making up the backbone of the food production system. They play a significant role in many aspects of crop production and animal-production enterprises. Women are often responsible for weeding, transplanting and post-harvest work. They bear the primary responsibility for vegetable gardens and the husbandry of their farm animals and their herding, watering, feeding, cleaning stalls, and milking.

However, their role as food producers and their contribution to household food security is largely unrecognized; as a result, women benefit less from outreach and training services. As they are the key to impacting agricultural development and food and nutrition security, it’s essential to improve and recognize the role of women as agricultural producers.

In South Asia, more than two thirds of employed women work in agriculture. The number of female-headed households is increasing significantly. In Bangladesh, 15 percent of households are headed by women in rural areas. According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), the number of female-headed households increased from 12.5 percent to 14.5 percent between 2014 to 2017-18. As wage earners and employers, women are participating in decision-making at the family level. However, women's participation in decision-making processes and in the leadership of rural organizations is low - resulting in women's rights, contributions and priorities being largely neglected by mainstream policies and agencies related to agriculture, food security and nutrition.

Women face more difficulties than men in gaining access to resources, while they are the backbone of smallholder farming and family maintenance. Despite the role of women as the mainstay of food production for family consumption, women's access to extension services and critical resources such as land, cash, technological materials, etc. remains limited in many parts of the world, which are the primary concern of women farmers and the key to food security.

Essentially, gender equality is an important issue in agriculture. Inequalities in resource control and access between men and women creates widespread inefficiency in production, which, if resolved, could improve food production and ensure global food and nutrition security. Thus, sustainable food security requires closing the gender gap in agriculture and empowering women and unleashing their potential to increase agricultural production.

It is therefore clear that women's empowerment, gender equality, and food security are associated and inextricably linked. Women's empowerment and gender equality at all levels should be ensured, but in developing countries like Bangladesh, it isn’t properly practiced yet, which is why child marriage is still prevalent and girls are not usually allowed to work outside the home and aren’t given much support for higher education.

Moreover, in our society, girls are not encouraged and allowed at all to start their own entrepreneurship and don’t get resources from family. So, when I quit my job and began my own startup, my family didn't receive it happily. However, I was fortunate that my family came forward to support me; even though they didn’t give much importance to my work, they didn’t oppose it. I worked hard in my entrepreneurial journey to make sure it wasn't the wrong choice for any woman to embark on entrepreneurship. As a result, the Model Livestock Advancement Foundation (MLAF) has been established and successfully providing veterinary treatment, education, and extension services since 2015. MLAF has improved the lives of thousands of individuals through employment, empowerment, and improved nutrition. Most of the employees of MLAF are women and one of them named Irin Akhter is more educated than her unemployed husband and happily managing her family.

My society including my family is proud of me now because I am the first female entrepreneur in the veterinary sector of Bangladesh. These achievements were not easily won. It was quite difficult to work as a woman in a male-dominated field operating in situations with less than adequate resources.

This is how the changes actually come about and hopefully, these changes as a whole will one day give women the respect they deserve and the world will be free from hunger and poverty.

Happy Women's Day to all.