Gender equality
To speed up food system transformation
To speed up food system transformation
Women are key actors in every part of the food system, as farmers, processors, wageworkers, traders, and consumers who purchase and prepare food for their families. However, their contributions are often unpaid and undervalued. According to the Global Gender Gap Index 2022, Indonesia is ranked92nd while Vietnam reached 83rd place out of 146 countries.
Over the past decade, Southeast Asian countries have made impressive strides in prioritizing gender equality. However, in general, women’s participation in the labour market and income distribution is still limited. On average, women in Southeast Asia earn between 30% and 40% less than men, according to Asian Development Bank figures.. Women in rural areas almost spend approximately 7-8 hours daily on unpaid household chores, such as cooking, cleaning, and childcare. This is physically demanding and limits women's opportunities to participate in other activities, such as education or paid work outside the home. Women are essential agents of change in the food and agriculture sector. Investing in women is investing in climate resilience, inclusive communities, and the future of food security.
Women are also hit harder by environmental degradation and climate change: the land assigned to them is often less fertile, and they don’t always have access to the resources they need to improve their soil and crop quality, for instance, machinery or essential agricultural inputs, such as seeds and fertilisers. Moreover, access to technical assistance, market information, and financing opportunities tend to be more limited for women, making it even more difficult for them to venture into entrepreneurship.
If women had the same access to and control over inputs such as seeds and fertiliser, property, technical assistance, market information, etc. as men, they could increase the total agricultural output on their own farms by 2.5 to 4 percent. Closing the gender gap in farm productivity and the wage gap in agrifood systems would reduce global food insecurity by about 2 percentage points, reducing the number of food-insecure people by 45 million. (FAO 2023) Research also shows that when women have access to a proper income, it improves child nutrition, health and education.
Women are feeding the world. Faced with a growing population, and the urgency of eradicating hunger and malnutrition, addressing gender disparity in all parts of the food system could have far-reaching impact on both food security and the well-being of a significant part of the world’s population.
Rikolto's global strategy focuses on three pillars: sustainable production, market inclusion and enabling environment. Gender equality is integrated within each of these three pillars.
1. Sustainable food production: It relates to our efforts to support farmer organisations on their road to professionalisation. We focus on sustainable production practices, resilience in the face of climate change and organisational development. We put in place the conditions for the full participation of women in food systems, at the production and post-harvest level, in the management of cooperatives, and for their access to inputs, resources, and services. This also means supporting farmer cooperatives to become more gender-inclusive, adopting differentiated training courses for women, setting up Women’s Committees as part of cooperatives’ organisational structures, etc.
2. Market inclusion: We aims to integrate smallholder farmers into national and international markets and improve citizens’ access to healthy and sustainable food. It works towards an inclusive food environment in which women and young people can gain a foothold on the one hand, and emphasises the importance of access to safe and nutritious food for consumers, particularly vulnerable ones, on the other. Our focus lies in agri-business development with equal opportunities for women and men. The key is improving the access of women to funds and credit, for instance through business incubators and gender-specific training.
3. Enabling environment: Gender mainstreaming in this aspect entails promoting equal opportunities for women to contribute to food policy discussion, equity in participation and representation of women in multi-stakeholder platforms, and contributing to policies and practices that promote improved access to and control over productive resources and services for women.
The strategy serves as the backbone for the development of our programmes and allows us to ensure our teams have the skills and resources to actively contribute to the elimination of gender-based inequalities in our sphere of influence. Scroll down for examples of how we translate the strategy into our work or read the full strategy by clicking on the button below.
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In the TRACTION project in Indonesia, a collaboration between Rainforest Alliance and Rikolto, women cocoa farmers in Ende were trained in practical skills such as turning cocoa waste into fertiliser, marketing techniques, and starting an agro-food business. These activities not only contributed to their economic improvement but also created a better social and political environment for other women in their communities.
In Depok, Rikolto also implemented an urban farming initiative that successfully involved more than 150 community members, 71.8% of whom were women. Through this programme, the community can optimise land use in the city and increase access to healthy and nutritious food. Urban farmers in Depok produced 2,624 tonnes of vegetables in 2023 by utilising 16,850 m2 of land.
And through a Farmer Field School for female rice farmers in Boyolali, Rikolto aims to provide equal opportunities and skills for female and male farmers. At the demonstration plot, participants can learn and practice first hand how to plant rice using the 2:1 Jajar Legowo planting method, observe plant conditions, identify pests and plant diseases, and learn rice cultivation techniques according to the Sustainable Rice Platform (SRP) standards.
Rikolto joined forces with the Women’s Initiative for Start-ups and Entrepreneurship (WISE). We gathered over 100 farmers, distributors, retailers, researchers, government authorities and stakeholders from the food supply chain in Hanoi. The topic of discussion: the effective distribution of healthy, sustainable and nutritious agri-food in the urban food system, and how women entrepreneurs and young people can be supported to develop ventures that contribute to the sustainability of urban food systems.
