Food Security, Productivity, and Gender Inequality - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 274

Women as Food Producers

Agriculture today contributes less than 10% of the GDP of most countries, but continues
to be a major source of employment and livelihoods in many. This is especially so in Asia
and Africa, where close to 60% of workers are in agriculture figure 11.2). This divergence
in major developing regions, between agriculture's GDP contribution and the population
it supports, means that many are trapped in low-productivity livelihoods. And this trap is
gendered, given women's disproportionate dependence on agriculture for a living.
Women workers depend much more on agriculture for survival than male workers,
due to their lesser access to nonfarm jobs. In Africa, for instance, in 2008, 63% of female
workers relative to 48% of male workers depended on agriculture-based livelihoods.
For Asia, the figures were 57% for females and 48% for males figures 11.3 and 11.4).
Women also constitute a substantial proportion of the total agricultural labor force
figure 11.5). In Asia, for instance, 43% of all farm workers in 2008 were female, with
figures as high as 52% in Cambodia and the Lao People's Democratic Republic, 50% in
Bangladesh, 49% in Vietnam, and 48% in China. In the world's major rice producing
and exporting regions, therefore, almost half the agricultural work force is female. In
Africa, again, women form almost 50% of agricultural workers. Moreover, based on
time use data for parts of sub-Saharan Africa, India, and China, Doss (2010: 9) finds
that women contribute 60-70% of the total labor needed to bring food to the table in

80

70

60

Africa
Asia

50

40

30

20

Oceania

S. America

10

Europe

N. America

0

1971 1981 1991 2001 2005 2008

Figure 11.2 Percent of total labor force in agriculture: world's regions.
Source: Based on FAO Statistics ( http:/faostat.fao.org) .