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Rural Women and Science: Enabling and Excluding Factors

Rural Women and Science: Enabling and Excluding Factors. Marcela Villarreal, Ph.D. Director Gender, Equity and Rural Development Division FAO Women in Science Bibliotheca Alexandrina, October 23-24, 2007. Focus on rural areas essential for effective science

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Rural Women and Science: Enabling and Excluding Factors

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  1. Rural Women and Science:Enabling and Excluding Factors Marcela Villarreal, Ph.D. Director Gender, Equity and Rural Development Division FAO Women in Science Bibliotheca Alexandrina, October 23-24, 2007

  2. Focus on rural areas essential for effective science • Societies advance at the speed of the slowest • Source of knowledge (gendered) • 75 percent of the world poor live in rural areas • Women: Over-represented among the poor

  3. Making Science benefit People • Education • Health • Policy • Mechanisms of exclusion

  4. 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Heart Cancer Stroke Respiratory Accidents Disease infections Top Five Causes of Death: U.S.A

  5. 16% 14% 12% 10% 8% 6% 4% 2% 0% Heart disease Respiratory Stroke Perinatal Tuberculosis infections conditions Top Five Causes of Death: South & East Asia

  6. 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% HIV/AIDS Malaria Respiratory Diarrheal Perinatal infections diseases conditions Top Five Causes of Death: Africa

  7. Days of work lost to disease, 2005 Source: calculated from WHO 2005

  8. HIV and AIDS

  9. Eastern Europe & Central Asia 1.4 million [920 000 – 2.1 million] Western & Central Europe 610 000 [480 000 – 760 000] North America 1.0 million [540 000 – 1.6 million] East Asia 1.1 million [560 000 – 1.8 million] North Africa & Middle East 540 000 [230 000 – 1.5 million] Caribbean 440 000 [270 000 – 780 000] South & South-East Asia 7.1 million [4.4 – 10.6 million] Sub-Saharan Africa 25.4 million [23.4 – 28.4 million] Latin America 1.7 million [1.3 – 2.2 million] Oceania 35 000 [25 000 – 48 000] Total: 39.4 (35.9 – 44.3) million Source: UNAIDS Adults and children estimated to be living with HIV as of end 2004

  10. HIV prevalence in adults in sub-Saharan Africa, 1986-2001 1986 1991 20 – 39% 10 – 20% 5 – 10% 1 – 5% 1996 2001 0 – 1% trend data unavailable outside region Source: UNAIDS/WHO 2002

  11. HIV/AIDS affects Food Security • Loss of agricultural labour • Impoverishment of household • Loss of knowledge and skills • Children taken out of school • Institutions • Plant diversity, genetic resources • Social safety nets undermined

  12. Impacts of HIV/AIDS • Decline in land cultivated and range of crops • Increase in cost of hired labour • Deflated land prices • Shift to less labour-intensive crops • Decreased agricultural productivity • Increased malnutrition • Increased food insecurity • Rural development undermined

  13. Gender and land in sub-Saharan Africa • Land rights governed by social institutions such as marriage • Levirat: protects male rights to land • Type of marriage • Male privileges on land • Customary prevails over formal

  14. HIV/AIDS impacts on land • loss of land rights including inheritance rights • shifts in tenure • distress sales and shifts in ownership • changes in land use: • significant decreases in amounts of land cultivated • shifts in the types of crops cultivated

  15. Zambia: Household Membership in Cooperatives Source: FAO, 2003

  16. Zambia: Average Land Size by Household Type Hectares Source: FAO, 2003

  17. Uganda: % change in land cultivated, selected cash and food crops (1996-2002) % Food Cash (Source: FAO, 2003)

  18. What to do? • Understand mechanisms of exclusion • Address them in policy making • Link agricultural research with adoption taking into account the specificities of the population: rural, gender, indigenous • Safeguard local and indigenous knowledge • Formulate specific policy to ensure that rural women will benefit (need data)

  19. Thank you

  20. Agriculture Sector strategy REDUCTION OF VULNERABILITY, UNDERLYING CAUSES • Labour saving technologies and practices • Low input agriculture; new varieties • Knowledge systems (orphans) • Gender issues in particular access to land • Nutrition and food interventions • Innovative micro-finance activities in the rural sector • Capacity building of relevant local and national institutions (including CSOs and MoA)

  21. What to do? • Research gender, land and HIV/AIDS in different contexts • Promote the formulation, adoption and enforcement of statutory law that ensures gender equality in the access to, ownership of and right to inherit land • Ensure equal rights regardless of the type of marriage • Improve public policy to reach more effectively the most vulnerable • Promote the legal empowerment of rural women and orphans • Promote community based approaches that create or reinforce self-esteem and other life skills

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