October 15th  

Women and girls play a crucial role in enforcing sustainability in rural homes as well as communities. They can be largely credited for improving rural livelihoods of their communities. Women make up a large proportion of the agricultural work force, and perform the the majority of unpaid domestic work in families and homes in rural areas. They contribute to production in agriculture, food production and nutrition, natural resource management, and developing climate resilience.

Women and girls in rural areas have the burden of multi-dimensional poverty. Even though extreme poverty has declined on the global front, the world’s 1 billion people who still live in the worst conditions of poverty are mostly located in rural areas. The rates of poverty in rural communities are generally higher than those in urban areas. Even so, small-scale agriculture produces almost 80 percent of food in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. This type of agriculture supports the livelihoods of about 2.5 billion people around the world. Women farmers are most likely just as productive as their male counterparts, but have less access to land, credit, agricultural investments, and high value food chains to obtain lower prices for their crops.

Women and girls face discrimination and limitations in society that hold them back. They often don’t have access to the same resources and assistance that their male counterparts have access to. On a global scale, every gender and development study in rural areas show that rural women have it far worse than rural men and urban women. Climate change,also amplifies existing gender inequalities in rural areas. It affects women and men’s resources and well-being in different ways, including agriculture, food security, health, water and other necessary resources.

The theme for this year seeks to empower rural women and girls in fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals.