posted by Mireille
Today, October 16th, is World Food Day - which is one day after the International Day of Rural Women is celebrated. Yesterday, the role of rural women in particular, in food production and food security was highlighted. Worldwide, 428 million women work in the agricultural sector. In Africa and South Asia, that means respectively 68 and 61 percent of the working women.
That's a lot - it's one quarter of the world's population, says Karen Serres, president of the IFAP committee of women farmers in a press release issued on October 12. All these women farmers have an enormous amount of experience in farming and in adapting techniques to climatic, political, socio-cultural and financial changes. So, women have solutions!
But are they able to show their knowledge, experience and solutions? Probably not, otherwise the theme of this year's World Rural Women's Day would not have to be 'rural women at the heart of innovation'. Women do show their overwhelming participation in agriculture in facts and figures. But despite all their knowledge and experience, women usually do not speak out at community meetings on agricultural development and they are not consulted by their husbands, donors and institutions on technological matters. So, women do not share their solutions!
Who is to blame? No one personally, naturally. We all want to hear them, we always make sure that they are present at meetings, we want to learn from them, but we simply forget to consider their solutions.  Fortunately, life is as simple as you make it: just always think of women first! Think about your mother, your sister, your neighbour, your teacher from school, the woman farmer you always pass just outside town: what would they think? Just have them in mind and you will learn. For women do have solutions!
photo: Bed. P. Khatiwada