09:58
rwandaexpress
A new report has indicated that there is gender disparity in the agricultural sector in Rwanda among the countries where the research was conducted in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The report by Agri-ProFocus – a Dutch based organization was this May 2012, made public in Kigali city, by Agri-Hub, a sister company of Agri-ProFocus.
The 367-page research report entitled “A woman’s Business: Gender equity in agricultural value chains” was based on a research conducted in the three continents since 2008. In Africa, the research was conducted in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Rwanda
The research was commissioned by the Royal Tropical Institute (RTI) showed that achieving gender equality in most of the agricultural work is still a major challenge.
It points out that poverty remains concentrated in rural areas and conditions in agriculture are especially hard for women; and women are at least half of the workforce in agriculture; often their work is not visible, or is simply not valued, and often excluded from more profitable aspects of agric-enterprises.
However the report recommended specific measures of interventions such as: support female entrepreneurs to bring economic prosperity, reduce poverty and improve the economic and societal position of women and their activities in the chain.
Rhiannon Pyburn, the Senior Advisor at RTI, said the research findings indicated that women had limited access to resources, such as land, credit and other services in rural communities.
Adding that women do most domestic chores, face high levels of illiteracy and lack bargaining power in the three surveyed continents.
Pyburn advised Governments to consider gender mainstreaming dimensions with a practical focus on livelihoods, income generation and quality issues of when in the three continents, because they are the ones who do most of the agricultural work.
On the Rwanda story Pyburn said that despite the fact that Rwanda is ahead in addressing gender inequality in Africa, respecting gender value chains in agricultural work is still a challenge.
Rwandan agricultural experts say that women constitute the majority of the agricultural workforce and that most of the work done by women in the rural areas of normally attributed to their husbands in rural communities.
Patrice Mugenzi, a lecturer at the Higher Institute of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry (ISAE) Busogo, said that this community and social perception of women should be changed and women credited for the contributions so as to be role models for other women in rural communities.
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