Synopsis of Gender in agriculture: Closing the knowledge gap

Abstract

Women play important and varied roles in agriculture, but they have unequal access, relative to men, to productive resources and opportunities. Closing these gender gaps would be good both for women and for agriculture. This was the message given by The State of Food and Agriculture 2010-11, a report of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). As it prepared the report, the FAO drew together a wealth of background information based on a growing body of research and statistics on women in agriculture, and it commissioned the International Food Policy Research Institute to edit a book based on these background studies. The resulting book, Gender in Agriculture: Closing the Knowledge Gap, is a compendium of what we now know about gender gaps in agriculture and why such gaps matter.