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The role of women smallholder farmers in achieving global food security: an overview

Code: 9781835453360
Publication date: 11-08-2025
Extent: 32 pages

Contributions by: Caroline Muchiri, Els Lecoutere and Nicoline de Haan, GENDER Impact Platform – CGIAR, Kenya

Chapter synopsis:

Women smallholder farmers across the globe play pivotal roles in enhancing global food security by contributing to food production, accessibility, stability and utilisation. These roles lack sufficient recognition in global food policies and are hindered by prevailing structural gender inequalities. These constraints are rooted in restrictive gender norms, disparities in access to and control over productive and complementary resources, disproportionate allocation of domestic responsibilities and limited agency. They collectively undermine the full potential of women’s contributions to sustainable food security. Challenging the discriminatory norms that weaken women’s capacities to produce and purchase sufficient and nutritious food requires targeted strategies to promote gender equality and empower women to achieve improved food security outcomes at the household, community and global levels. Accessing data from global datasets about women's contributions and challenges offers the necessary evidence to support their crucial role in attaining food security.



DOI: 10.19103/AS.2024.0148.01

Open Access

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY).

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Table of contents
  • 1 Introduction
  • 2 Analysing the role of women smallholder farmersand global food security
  • 3 Roles of women smallholder farmers in agricultureand food systems for global food security
  • 4 Constraints on women smallholders roles inachieving global food security: structural genderinequalities
  • 5 Constraints on women smallholders roles inachieving global food security: life cycle-relatedconstraints
  • 6 Potential strategies to address constraints:strengthening agency of women smallholders toachieve food security
  • 7 Potential strategies to address constraints: tailoringinterventions to aspirations and life cycle of womensmallholders
  • 8 Potential strategies to address constraints: providingdata to support women smallholders roles towardsglobal food security
  • 9 Conclusion
  • 10 Where to look for further information
  • 11 References

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