Rural Women’s Day: how to improve life in rural areas? 

On October 15, the day of rural women is celebrated. This theme of the day is the expansion of opportunities for rural women in the context of Sustainable Development Goals this year.

Number of people employed in agriculture decreases in Armenia The reason is emigration from the country and internal migration flows. The village is now associated with torture, fighting with land, and poverty.

Agriculture is the largest employment sector in the country, where around 34% of employed people are employed. 52% of them are women, which makes women the most important part of the development of agriculture. In the structure of men’s employment, 31% are in agriculture and 37% in the structure of women’s employment. In fact, most of the agricultural products are created by women and they are the main guarantors of food supply and the survival of households in rural areas. At the same time, women’s employment in the agricultural sector is largely informal, which gives grounds for characterizing women as the lowest paid and socially unprotected segment of the labor market.

The UN estimates that rural women, whose main source of survival is natural resources and agriculture, constitute a quarter of the world’s population. In developed countries, they constitute 43% of those involved in agriculture, with food security as they produce and process most of the food.

Female farmers can be just as prolific, producers and entrepreneurs as men, but for them there are no access to land, loans, agricultural resources, markets, and agricultural commodity networks

Although progress has been made in gender equality in some areas, several areas, including the agricultural sector, require active action to achieve the goals set out for 2030.

Full text in Armenian