Elevating the Voices of Women in Agriculture (EVWA) Council: Policy Recommendations

Policy Recommendations from the Elevating the Voices of Women in Agriculture (EVWA) Council 

Foreword by Ban Ki-moon 

Climate change is an urgent reality, 

disproportionately affecting those who 

contribute to it the least. Among the most 

vulnerable are millions of smallholder farmers 

worldwide, particularly women in Africa who 

form the backbone of the continent’s food 

production. 

During my tenure as Secretary-General of the 

United Nations, I strived to chart a course 

toward a sustainable future for people, planet, 

and prosperity. Today, through the Elevating 

the Voices of Women in Agriculture (EVWA) 

Program, the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global 

Citizens continues this mission by amplifying 

the voices of women smallholder farmers and 

showcasing the innovative work of young 

changemakers in this critical sector. 

The Elevating the Voices of Women in 

Agriculture (EVWA) Council plays a pivotal role 

in bringing diverse perspectives to the table 

and ensuring that the voices of women farmers 

are heard and reflected in policy 

recommendations. This publication captures 

these vital insights and reminds us that 

empowering women in agriculture is not only a 

moral imperative but a pathway to achieving 

the Sustainable Development Goals and 

building climate resilience. 

As you read this document, I encourage you to 

consider your own role in supporting the 

empowerment of women farmers. The 

challenges they face – from limited access to 

land and resources to barriers in leadership – 

require collective action and shared 

responsibility. 

It is my sincere hope that the case studies and 

recommendations outlined here will influence 

the global discussion on empowering women 

in agriculture and addressing their challenges. 

Together, we can build a more equitable and 

resilient world for all. 

Ban Ki-moon 

8th Secretary-General, United Nations 

Co-Chair, Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global 

Citizens 

1


Introduction 

About the Ban Ki-moon Centre’s Elevating the Voices of Women in Agriculture (EVWA) Program 

Women account for nearly half of the world’s 

smallholder farmers. In Africa, they produce 70% 

of the continent’s food. However, because of 

gender inequalities and our changing climate 

they are the most vulnerable members of the 

farming community, facing obstacles in 

accessing land, finances, education, and more. 

To tackle these challenges, the Ban Ki-moon 

Centre for Global Citizens (BKMC) is working 

with young changemakers in Africa and experts 

from different sectors around the world to 

address three key areas: 

1. Recognizing exceptional young African 

leaders through the EVWA 

Changemakers campaign 

2. Providing support and visibility to the 

most innovative project via the EVWA 

Champion component 

3. Facilitating multi-stakeholder dialogues 

on gender, agriculture, and climate 

change through the EVWA Council. 

With the EVWA Changemakers Campaign and 

the EVWA Council, the BKMC is on a mission to 

highlight and galvanize action for the 

empowerment of women farmers in Africa. 

About the BKMC 

BKMC’s mission is to foster leadership for the 

implementation of the Sustainable 

Development Goals and the Paris Climate 

Agreement by inspiring current leaders – 

decision makers – and empowering the next 

generation of leaders – changemakers. Working 

with governments, civil society, academia, and 

international organizations, the BKMC has 

reached more than 900,000 people around the 

world to date. Located in Vienna, Austria, the 

BKMC is co-chaired by the 8th Secretary- 

General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, and the 11th 

President of the Republic of Austria, Heinz 

Fischer. 

Composed of twelve experts from academia, 

international organizations, NGOs, farmers’ 

collectives, and governmental representatives, 

the EVWA Council works with women 

smallholder farmers and young changemakers 

to include their perspectives and case studies in 

policy recommendations to tackle the main 

challenges women smallholder farmers face. 

This publication presents the results of multiple 

discussion rounds of EVWA Council members 

on three topics identified as most important for 

improving female farmers’ lived realities: 

• Access to Land 

• Access to Resources 

• Access to Leadership 

It aims to bring the voices of women 

smallholder farmers and young changemakers 

to high-level discussions on topics that affect 

them the most. 

2


Council Members 

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Women produce approximately 70% of food in 

African countries despite gender gaps in access 

to land, resources, and leadership that reduce 

their average output per hectare. Women are 

much less likely than men to own the land they 

cultivate, have control over what to plant, 

whether to purchase inputs, and/or what to do 

with their harvests. When women have their 

own land outside of family plots, it is on average 

of poorer quality than that controlled by men. 

For example, women’s land may have poorer 

soil or be located farther away from their 

residences, markets, roads, and storage 

infrastructure. Advancing equitable access to 

land is crucial for women’s economic and 

political empowerment. This is complex 

because, in many places, land ownership is 

closely tied to influence in the community and 

to social, cultural, and religious practices. 

Studies have shown that total agricultural 

production and food security increase when 

women have secure tenure and can invest in 

their land, and even that advancing women’s 

rights to land reduces domestic violence. 

Ownership of land further encourages longterm 

investment, which is critical for increasing 

income and building resilience to climate 

change. As women’s incomes increase, so does 

investment in children’s education and health. 

Women farmers’ access to land has been the 

subject of many programs, studies, and reports, 

a selection of which is presented at the end of 

this document. This Policy Brief does not seek to 

summarize the findings of these previous 

studies, provide a comprehensive overview of 

measures and policies, or assess their 

effectiveness. Rather, it briefly presents five 

‘Seedlings’ – ideas, concepts, or insights – 

derived from the discussions held within the 

council that merit further exploration so as to 

reframe discussions around women’s access to 

land in a productive way. It is hoped that these 

Seedlings will provide inspiration to 

policymakers, development practitioners, 

farmer representation groups, and smallholder 

farmers. 

Seedling 1: Undertake genderresponsive 

land registration 

processes – ensure smallholder 

farmers, particularly women, 

receive land titles and genderdisaggregated 

data is collected 

Insecure land tenure forms a major barrier to 

advancing the climate change resilience of 

African smallholder farmers as it discourages 

long-term investment in soil and ecosystem 

health and in agricultural infrastructure and 

technology. In recent years, governments and 

other actors have started using an array of 

modern technologies to speed up and 

democratize land registration processes, 

including drones, mobile phones, and artificial 

intelligence tools to map land boundaries and 

blockchain-based applications to register 

ownership. These new tools are usually 

combined with more traditional methodologies 

for community consultation and consensus 

building to ensure wide support. 

This accelerating movement towards the 

formalization of land tenure creates two 

opportunities for advancing women’s access to 

land. If these opportunities are not grasped, 

land registration processes are at risk of further 

entrenching and formalizing gender gaps in 

agriculture. The EVWA Council therefore calls 

upon those designing these processes to do the 

following: 

Firstly, adopt advancing land tenure by women 

smallholder farmers as a formal goal of the 

registration processes. Instead of assuming that 

women will have the same opportunities to 

have their land tenure recognized as men, 

gender audits of land registration processes 

should be performed and measures adopted to 

prevent the perpetuation of inequalities and 

systemic gender bias. For example, community 

consultations should take place at times and in 

locations that suit women’s schedules, and 

family land should be registered under both 

spouses’ names, not only the husband’s. 

Secondly, use the community consultations to 

raise support for women’s land tenure and 

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awareness of its benefits to society in terms of 

increased food security, economic prosperity, 

and resilience to climate change and external 

market shocks. The teams leading the 

consultations should be trained to understand 

gender dynamics in local land ownership and 

power structures. By expressly including 

women and foregrounding their perspectives 

in community discussions, these consultations 

can also help normalize women’s participation 

and leadership in community decision-making. 

These processes will need to be accompanied 

by discussions and documentation of 

inheritance rights. In most African countries, 

land is a key source of familial wealth, and it is 

passed down from generation to generation. 

Under patriarchal customs, women are often 

unable to inherit land; since women tend to 

marry into the families of their husbands, any 

land they inherit is ‘lost’ to their original family. 

These customs also impact widows as the land 

they may have cultivated over a lifetime is often 

repossessed by the husband's family after his 

death. Community-wide discussions about land 

tenure provide good opportunities to consider 

and formalize reformed systems for land 

inheritance. 

Seedling 2: Grow the pie: unlock and 

restore more land for agriculture 

Advancing women smallholder farmers’ access 

to land is often described as a zero-sum game: 

for women to gain access to land, it has to be 

taken away from men. While this is sometimes 

true, though primarily in cases where women 

are already those tending to land owned by 

men, there is an additional opportunity to 

identify land that is suitable for agriculture but 

is not yet being used. 

Examples of opportunities to unlock additional 

land include restoring empty plots in urban and 

peri-urban environments and degraded or 

marginal land that can be used for food 

production. Urban agriculture has many 

positive effects besides enhanced food security; 

it also mitigates local pollution, reduces urban 

heat island effects, increases residents’ wellbeing, 

and provides a habitat for pollinators and 

other species. Modern technologies such as AI 

and satellite imagery can be used to identify 

suitable plots. Additionally, innovative practices 

to optimize land use and productivity, such as 

vertical farming, can be supported and 

upscaled. 

Framing efforts to enhance women’s access to 

land at least partly as ‘growing the pie’ for 

everyone has the advantage that it allays men’s 

concerns of being disadvantaged. However, 

two key principles must be adhered to in order 

to prevent harm. Firstly, the aim should be for 

men and women to have access to land of 

equal quality; newly unlocked land provided to 

women should not be of significantly poorer 

quality than land already owned by men. 

Secondly, efforts to make available additional 

land for agriculture should not result in the 

conversion of natural land or in deforestation. 

Seedling 3: Develop genderresponsive 

laws and implement them 

In some African countries, women farmers’ 

equal access to land is hindered by 

discriminatory laws and regulations. In others, 

laws and regulations are not outright 

discriminatory, but rather ‘gender blind’, that is, 

they do not acknowledge existing gender gaps 

and therefore perpetuate them, or at least do 

not help close them. Other African countries 

have excellent gender-responsive laws and 

regulations governing land ownership but have 

not managed to implement these effectively, 

sometimes due to the existence of a parallel 

system of discriminatory customary laws and 

traditions. 

The EVWA Council calls upon governments to 

eliminate discriminatory laws and identify and 

amend gender-blind laws, policies, and 

programs. Conducting a gender audit, similar to 

the one undertaken by the Kenyan Ministry of 

5


Energy, would be a good start. 1 The Council also 

calls upon governments and donors to make 

available the resources to enhance the 

implementation of existing gender-responsive 

laws. This can be achieved through awareness 

raising at all levels and among all relevant 

stakeholders, and by strengthening the 

capacity of the relevant government agencies 

and civil society organizations. 

Seedling 4: Empower existing local 

women’s groups and civil society 

organizations to liaise between 

women farmers and policymakers 

Even when women farmers are aware of their 

legal rights to land, they often do not manage 

to claim them. This can be because they lack 

support in the community, or simply because 

they do not have the time. In a well-functioning 

system, women farmers should not also need to 

be activists or need to individually overcome 

pushback from their communities to access the 

support they are due. Thankfully, throughout 

Africa, local women’s groups and civil society 

organizations do excellent work as facilitators, 

organizing and supporting women farmers to 

close gender gaps. The EVWA Council calls 

upon governments and their partners to build 

on these existing structures to advance women 

farmers’ access to land. 

Firstly, governments should ensure that women 

farmers always have a seat at the table when 

land issues are discussed, at any level of 

government (local, regional, national, and 

international); this may require the 

establishment of task forces that women’s 

groups are part of. Such task forces, which 

should also include all agencies relevant to land 

issues (agriculture, trade, food security, water 

resources, environment, etc.), will also support 

more effective integrated land use and resource 

planning. 

Secondly, local women’s groups and civil 

society organizations should be supported to 

assist the constituents in their communities by 

raising local awareness of the benefits of closing 

gender gaps in agriculture, as well as by helping 

women to claim their rights, informing them of 

policy changes, and helping them to access 

resources. 

Seedling 5: Include men as agents of 

change 

In discussions about gender equality, men often 

express that they would like to be better allies 

but are not sure whether it is appropriate for 

them to insert themselves into the 

conversation, or simply do not know where to 

start. However, the support of men at all levels 

is crucial for closing gender gaps. The EVWA 

Council calls on governments and their partners 

to actively involve men in their efforts, stressing 

that given the potential benefits to society as a 

whole, advancing gender equality should not 

be viewed as solely a women’s issue. 

Some ways to facilitate more effective allyship 

include equipping men and women in relevant 

positions with the facts and arguments they 

need to advocate for gender equality; raising 

awareness of the results of gender audits so 

people can more readily recognize and change 

practices that perpetuate inequalities; and 

appointing men as “gender equality 

champions”. 

The international NGO Farm Africa successfully 

supported female Ugandan coffee farmers’ 

access to land by educating entire communities 

on the benefits of empowering women. The 

organization worked with heads of household, 

primarily men, to develop voluntary land use 

agreements through which women gained 

access to land and more control over their 

income from agriculture. By framing discussions 

in terms of ‘maximizing the benefits of 

everybody’s hard work for the benefit of the 

community’, Farm Africa managed to garner 

widespread support for these activities, also 

among men. 1 6 

1 

https://energia.org/assets/2023/03/Gender-and- 

Energy-Policy-Brief-INTERACTIVE.pdf


In 2023, global food insecurity grew by 10 

percent, driven by a combination of conflicts 

and climate change. An estimated 238 million 

people worldwide now face acute food 

insecurity. 2 To curb this trend, we need to 

empower smallholder farmers to enhance their 

resilience and increase their yields. More 

support is required, especially for women 

smallholder farmers, who grow the majority of 

food crops in low- and middle-income 

countries. Women have more difficulty 

accessing land, resources, and leadership than 

men have; as a result, their average yields per 

acre are lower – in some cases up to 30 

percent. 3 Efforts must be made to close gender 

productivity gaps. 

In the previous policy brief, the EVWA Council 

provided recommendations to enhance 

equitable access to land. This second brief 

focuses on improving women smallholder 

farmers’ access to resources to grow their yields 

and enhance their resilience. 

This paper follows the UN Women and ESCWA’s 

definition of the concept of ‘access and control 

over resources’ 4 (see Box 1). 

Resource access patterns and trends vary 

greatly among and within countries. This makes 

it impossible to create a universal hierarchy or 

select the most important resources women 

smallholder farmers everywhere require. 

Therefore, the EVWA Council decided to use this 

brief as an opportunity to ‘zoom out’ and look at 

women smallholder farmers’ lives and food crop 

value chains on and off the farm. 

In discussions on access to resources, it is 

important to consider intersectionality: a 

smallholder farmer’s gender is not always the 

main factor that determines their ability to 

access the resources they need. Cultural factors, 

Box 1 – Definition of Access and Control 

over Resources (UN Women, ESCWA) 

Resources refers to means and goods, including 

economic (household income) or productive 

means (land, equipment, tools, work, credit); 

political means (capability for leadership, 

information, and organization); and time. 

Access and control have slightly different 

meanings. Access refers to the ability to use and 

benefit from specific resources (material, 

financial, human, social, political, etc.), whereas 

control over resources also entails being able to 

make decisions over the use of that resource. For 

example, women’s control over land means 

that they can access land (use it), own land (be 

the legal titleholders), and make decisions 

about whether to sell or rent the land. Access 

and control over resources is a key element of 

women’s empowerment, and by extension, the 

achievement of gender equality. 

education, geography, and wealth also play 

important roles. In addition, though women on 

average have lower access than men to almost 

all types of resources almost everywhere, access 

rates are often very low for both women and 

men. For example, FAO survey results show that 

in Ghana in 2017, the share of male farmers with 

access to irrigation was slightly higher than that 

of female farmers, but still below 3 percent. 5 We 

therefore ideally need interventions that 

support all smallholder farmers but are gender 

transformative in that they include a special 

focus on women and advance gender equality 

overall. Finally, it is important to remember that 

access to resources is not binary. Many studies 

that investigate the issue ask yes or no 

questions to gauge farmers’ access to, for 

2 

“Global Food Crises – mid-year update 2023: 

hunger and malnutrition levels remain alarmingly 

high,” EU Science Hub, European Commission, 

accessed April 15, 2024, https://joint-researchcentre.ec.europa.eu/jrc-news-and-updates/globalfood-crises-mid-year-update-2023-2023-09-15_en 

3 

World Bank Group, “Gender Gaps in Agriculture 

Productivity and Public Spending in Nigeria,” 

Nigeria Gender Innovation Lab, 19 September 

2023, 

https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/09 

9091823113036874/pdf/P175095086510b001080 

e30d147463456d6.pdf 

4 

“Term: Access and control over resources,” SD 

Glossary, UN ESCWA. Accessed April 15, 2024, 

https://www.unescwa.org/sd-glossary/access-andcontrol-over-resources 

5 

FAO, The Status of Women in Agrifood Systems. 

Rome. P.82. https://doi.org/10.4060/cc5343en 

7


example, fertilizer. They do not assess whether 

farmers have enough fertilizer to meet their 

needs, or how difficult, costly, or timeconsuming 

it is to access fertilizer. In addition, 

most studies investigate household access to 

resources, differentiating between male- and 

female-headed households. Intra-household 

dynamics are not considered, so women 

smallholder farmers in male-headed 

households remain invisible in the statistics. 

Given the many variables that influence access 

to resources, better data, and in particular better 

sex-disaggregated data, is needed. 

Considering these complexities and the broad 

nature of the issue at hand, the EVWA Council 

has developed three ‘seedlings’ that may inspire 

governments and other stakeholders as they 

think through and act to advance women 

smallholder farmers’ access to resources. 

Seedling 1: Address buckets of needs 

The first seedling proposes the definition of 

three ‘buckets of needs’ to guide interventions 

to advance women smallholder farmers’ access 

to resources: 1) directly farming-related 

resources; 2) infrastructure; 3) knowledge, 

agency, and time. These buckets are useful as 

they highlight the types of resources required 

by farmers. To build lasting resilience, 

interventions that address all three buckets are 

necessary. The buckets also help to 

demonstrate that women smallholder farmers’ 

lives must be considered holistically, as their 

lives on and off their farms are closely 

interwoven. For example, unpaid household 

work is an important variable influencing the 

success of female-led agri-businesses; time 

poverty is one of the biggest constraints on 

women smallholder farmers developing new 

revenue streams. 

Bucket 1. Directly farming-related 

resources 

These are what people tend to think of first 

when discussing access to resources for 

6 

ActionAid International. What Women Farmers 

Need: A Blueprint for Action. The Hague, 2011. 

farmers: inputs such as improved seeds, 

fertilizer, and tools, but also credit. Access to 

credit remains low for both male and female 

smallholder farmers, but getting loans is more 

challenging for women as they are less likely to 

be able to provide collateral, such as land. Tools 

are often financially out of reach for women 

farmers but may also be physically unsuitable if 

they have been designed for the average man. 

Even when tools are designed to support work 

primarily undertaken by women, women are 

often not sufficiently engaged or consulted in 

the design process. 

Bucket 2. Infrastructure 

The resources in this bucket tend to be 

communal and require organization rather than 

the empowerment of individual smallholder 

farmers. They include energy and water 

infrastructure, storage and processing facilities 

to reduce post-harvest waste, transport, and 

markets. Besides directly supporting farming 

activities, resources such as easily accessible 

water and energy are also particularly important 

to free up women’s time for farming activities 

by reducing workloads in the household. It is 

important to remember that even if 

communities have infrastructure in place, 

women are still more likely to be underserved. 

Their land may be further away from water 

sources, 6 for example, or they may not be able 

to benefit from electricity as they lack access to 

appliances. 

Bucket 3. Knowledge, agency, and time 

The resources in this bucket are the least 

tangible of all but serve as important multipliers 

for interventions that enhance access to the 

resources in the other buckets. If women 

farmers can access education or extension 

services, increase their decision-making 

authority over their farms, and invest more time 

in farming, their ability to access and effectively 

use all other resources will improve. Examples of 

interventions that address this bucket include 

unlocking access to market information and 

knowledge on prices to help farmers make 

smart choices for more lucrative products. 

https://actionaid.org/sites/default/files/the_blue_ 

print_for_women_farmers.pdf 

8


Stakeholders can also support women farmers 

and their cooperatives to develop their business 

and planning skills. Information services such as 

weather forecasts can serve as a buffer against 

uncertainties. Women’s agency and time are 

more difficult to influence as these are often 

determined by deeply ingrained cultural norms. 

All stakeholders working with women 

smallholder farmers should make sure at the 

very least that they do not exacerbate women’s 

time poverty, 7 and ideally find entry points to 

advance gender equality more generally, at the 

household and community levels. 

Seedling 2: Strengthen value chains 

This seedling provides an alternative way to 

organize interventions to the ‘buckets’ 

described above. It proposes a focus on 

resources required for post-harvest processing 

and access to markets, as these are ultimately 

the most important for growing incomes and 

thereby resilience to climate change and other 

shocks. The proposal is to focus on chains: 

• Food crop value chains: Whereas value 

chains for commodity crops 8 , primarily 

grown and sold by men, tend to be welldeveloped 

and formalized, value chains for 

food crops 9 often are not, despite their 

importance for food security. This leads to 

underinvestment in food crop cultivation, 

which women farmers dominate. 

• ‘Resource needs chains’: For example, in 

order to purchase machinery, women first 

need to access credit. To access credit, they 

need to build the financial literacy to write 

good loan applications. They also need 

access to markets so that they can generate 

7 

E.g. Bain, Ransom and Halimatusa’diyah (2018) 

found that though interventions that provided 

women farmers in Uganda with dairy cows led to 

higher incomes and enhanced nutritional security, 

many women struggled to combine care for their 

cows (especially accessing enough clean water) 

with their other duties. Bain, C., Ransom, E. and 

Halimatusa’diyah, I., “Weak winners’ of Women's 

empowerment: The gendered effects of dairy 

livestock assets on time poverty in Uganda,” 

Journal of Rural Studies, 61 (July 2018): pp.100- 

the income to repay the loan. Therefore, 

interventions that provide access to 

machinery without also addressing 

financial literacy, access to markets, and 

access to credit are likely to be less effective 

than those that consider resource needs 

chains. 

Ultimately, the goal is to help women regard 

agriculture as a business rather than a 

subsistence activity. Experience has shown that 

this mindset change can lead to better 

decision-making and higher yields. Another 

promising approach is to build more direct 

linkages between women farmers and market 

buyers and to make the value chain visible to 

both. For example, LadyAgri connects womenled 

SME buyers (e.g., shops and food 

businesses) to women farmer cooperatives. 

Stakeholders should analyze what else is 

needed to improve access to markets (Better 

storage? Better knowledge of when to store and 

when to sell? Better transport?) and address 

these resource needs as a priority. 

Whereas the first seedling sought to bring focus 

to women’s lives on and off their farms, this 

seedling highlights women’s roles not only at 

pre-harvest but also at post-harvest stages of 

production, and it seeks to empower women as 

key economic actors. Women already 

undertake the majority of the primary sorting 

and processing work for both food and 

commodity crops. Adding value to local food 

crops can bring visibility to the advantages of 

women’s entrepreneurship and increase their 

access to productive resources such as land. It 

will also lead to greater food production and 

improved food security. Finally, underlining 

women’s value and contribution to community 

well-being, nutrition, and resilience builds 

109. 

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2018.03.004 

8 

Commodity crops are crops primarily destined for 

sale/export, such as coffee, tea, sugar cane, cocoa, 

cotton, tobacco, etc. 

9 

Food crops are crops primarily destined for local 

or regional consumption, such as vegetables, 

fruits, grains, legumes, etc. 

9


momentum to increase women’s access to 

further resources and increase yields. 

Seedling 3: Change the game 

The third seedling pinpoints potential game 

changers that help women to tap into new 

opportunities. 

The first game changer identified is collective 

action: when women work together, they can 

unlock opportunities that are otherwise 

inaccessible. For decades, women’s savings 

groups have provided quick credit to women 

smallholder farmers unable to access financing 

elsewhere. However, the amounts they can 

provide are not sufficient to facilitate climate 

change adaptation or the purchase of 

technology for agri-businesses, and new forms 

of collaboration must be found. 

Good examples include the LadyAgri Pépites 

Programme in Guinea, 10 which builds womenowned 

business clusters along agricultural 

value chains. It has supported 200 SMEs, 

connecting women across the rural-urban 

divide, strengthening community sharing skills, 

and building a strong network working under 

the collective identity ‘Pépites'. Pépites as a 

collective is a significant economic force, which 

has managed to pique the interest of service 

providers, the government, and the financial 

sector in a way that individual farmers are 

unable to. 

Digital solutions can also change the game by 

facilitating instant access to information, 

connections, and organization where this was 

previously impossible, particularly for women in 

rural areas. For example, the Digital Agriculture 

for Accelerated and Inclusive Post-Covid 19 

Recovery Project 11 in Laikipia County, Kenya, 

increases access to and utilization of digital 

agricultural content for sustainable agriculture 

and food security. The LadyAgri SAFAF 

program, co-financed by the European Union, is 

a national food security program that helps 

women engage with the national market 

information system, has established an e- 

commerce platform, enhances access to 

finance, and builds farm-to-fork business 

clusters along agricultural value chains. Another 

example is the CGIAR Initiative on Digital 

Innovation. This initiative simultaneously 

addresses the supply and demand sides for 

agricultural information services aimed at 

smallholder farmers. It undertakes research and 

innovation efforts to develop improved, 

gender-responsive information services, while 

also supporting digital skills development 

among smallholder farmers and enhanced 

access to digital technologies and networks. 12 A 

specific example of the impact achieved is its 

collaboration with Farm Radio International 

(FRI), which supports over 700 radio shows in 40 

African countries. To allow FRI to provide more 

locally relevant information, farmers can call a 

free number and record responses to openended 

questions. However, manually analyzing 

the thousands of responses received proved 

difficult and time-consuming. In response to 

this challenge, CGIAR and FRI developed an 

automated system that uses artificial 

intelligence to analyze voicemails quickly and 

efficiently, thus unlocking a huge repository of 

farmer’s knowledge and perspectives. 13 

10 

LadiAgri Investment Hub. LadyAgri Annual 

Report 2021-2022. Accessed 18 April 2024, 

https://assets-global.websitefiles.com/5e6519c2af4002071aa3e753/62bb013d 

e08029250a1eada7_EN_Annual%20Report%2020 

22_compressed.pdf 

11 

The 

African Centre for Women, Information and Comm 

unications Technology (ACWICT) is a Kenya-based 

ICT for Development (ICT4D) Organization, with a 

regional reach whose mission is 

to promote women and youth access to and 

knowledge of ICTs as tools. See “About Us,” 

ACWICT, accessed 18 April 2024, 

https://www.acwict.org/about-us/ 

12 

“Initiative: Digital Innovation,” CGIAR Research 

Initiatives, CGIAR. Accessed 18 April 2024. 

https://www.cgiar.org/initiative/digitalinnovation/?section=about. 

13 

“INITIATIVE RESULT: Artificial intelligence 

enables extension services reaching 12 million 

10


As this paper shows, access to resources for 

women smallholder farmers is a large and 

complex issue, the nuances of which vary 

greatly among different countries, 

communities, and even households. During 

discussions in the EVWA Council, it became 

evident that it is often the programs that 

provide intensive, personal, long-term 

guidance to a small number of farmers that 

manage to make a lasting difference. Such 

projects not only help women farmers access all 

the resources along their ‘resource needs 

chains’, but they also support women’s 

empowerment and gender equality overall. As 

they require individual coaching and the 

building of trust, they are difficult to scale 

rapidly and therefore unlikely to make 

headlines. However, new digital solutions may 

be available to help grow their reach and 

impact. 

farmers in sub-Saharan Africa to respond to 

farmers’ voices,” CGIAR Research Initiatives, 

CGIAR. Accessed 18 April 2024, 

https://www.cgiar.org/initiative-result/artificial- 

intelligence-enables-extension-services-reaching- 

12-million-farmers-in-sub-saharan-africa-torespond-to-farmers-voices/. 

11


In its first two policy briefs, the Elevating the 

Voices of Women in Agriculture (EVWA) Council 

proposed approaches to advance equitable 

access to land and resources for women 

smallholder farmers. In this final brief, the 

Council discusses the issue of access to 

leadership. Enhanced access to leadership for 

women smallholder farmers would serve as a 

catalyst to close gaps in access to land and 

resources, and to achieve greater gender 

equality in the agriculture sector overall. 

Gender gaps in access to leadership among 

smallholder farmers manifest in three ways. The 

first is the most often discussed and the most 

visible: women are underrepresented in 

leadership positions in agricultural 

organizations at all levels, from local collectives 

to international organizations. The causes of this 

underrepresentation include prevailing cultural 

norms and prejudices (and a resulting lack of 

confidence/restrictions on mobility/activities), 

as well as women’s lower education and literacy 

levels and greater household responsibilities. 

Another barrier is the lack of compensation for 

leaders of farmer groups, which makes it more 

difficult for women to justify the time away from 

their farms and families. 14 This is a global issue, 

not limited to smallholder farmers or emerging 

economies. Agriculture is a male-dominated 

industry around the world and women farmers 

are also heavily underrepresented in 

agricultural leadership in countries such as the 

United States and Australia. 15 

The second way in which the gender gap in 

access to leadership manifests is much less 

visible and relates to the extent to which 

women smallholder farmers are able to 

influence decision-making. Studies have found 

that even when women achieve leadership 

positions, for example in the governing 

committees of farmer groups, they do not 

always have the same influence that male 

leaders have. The types of leadership positions 

open to women also have an impact. A study of 

women’s representation in the leadership of 

farmers’ groups in Uganda found that women 

are most often found in the position of treasurer 

because they are viewed as reliable and good 

record keepers, but much less often in key 

decision-making positions such as chairperson 

or advisor. 16 Women leaders’ influence on 

decision-making is difficult to measure; oftenused 

indicators such as the share of women on 

leadership committees do not capture whether 

their opinions carry equal weight within those 

committees. Even at the household or farm 

level, measuring women’s roles in decisionmaking 

is difficult; when people declare that 

certain decisions are made jointly by men and 

women, it may not mean they have equal 

participation in decision-making or equal 

influence on the final decision. 17 

14 

Chan, M. and Barrientos, S. 2010. Improving 

Opportunities for Women in Smallholder-based 

Supply Chains. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 

https://docs.gatesfoundation.org/documents/gen 

der-value-chain-guide.pdf; Chayal, K. et al., 2013. 

Involvement of Farm Women in Decision-making 

in Agriculture. Studies on Home and Community 

Science 7(1): 35-37. 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/32121 

4801_Involvement_of_Farm_Women_in_Decisionmaking_In_Agriculture.; 

Huot, S., Jensen, L., Bates, 

R., and Ader, D., 2023. Barriers of Women in 

Acquiring Leadership Positions in Agricultural 

Cooperatives: The Case of Cambodia. Rural 

Sociology 88(3). 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/r 

uso.12490.; TechnoServe, 2021. Women Who 

Lead: Empowering Women Farmers in India. 

https://www.technoserve.org/blog/women-wholead-empowering-women-farmers-in-india/. 

15 

E.g. Ressia, S., Strachan, G., Rogers, M., Ball, K., 

and McPhail, R., 2022. Farm Businesswomen’s 

Aspirations for Leadership: A Case Study of the 

Agricultural Sector in Queensland, Australia. 

Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. DOI: 

10.3389/fsufs.2022.838073. 

16 

Nakazi, F., Aseete, P., Katungi, E. and Ugen, 

M.A., 2017. The potential and limits of farmers’ 

groups as catalysts of women leaders. Cogent 

Economics & Finance, 5:1. 

https://doi.org/10.1080/23322039.2017.1348326 

17 

Williamson, J., 2021. Measuring Women’s 

Decision-Making Power in Agriculture. Agrilinks. 

12


The third manifestation of the gender gap in 

access to leadership is in women smallholder 

farmers’ ability to influence leadership: to have 

their concerns and ideas conveyed to, heard by, 

and acted upon by people in leadership 

positions. There is less literature available about 

this topic specific to smallholder farmers; 

however, the gap is well-studied in other 

contexts. It is the result of differences in 

networks and mobility between men and 

women that lead to men having more 

opportunities to encounter leaders, as well as 

biases among leaders and the digital gender 

divide. 

The benefits of enhanced access to leadership 

by women smallholder farmers are welldocumented. 

They include more informed 

decision-making, based on a greater and more 

diverse pool of knowledge, leading to more 

effective policies and programs not only for 

women but for entire communities. 18 In 

addition, studies have found that the 

empowerment of women as decision-makers at 

the farm level was associated with increased 

productivity, efficiency, use of inputs such as 

improved seeds, and adoption of new 

technology, 19 and that agricultural decisionmaking 

in groups (such as collectives) led to 

broader benefits when more women were 

involved. 20 

In response to these findings, the Council 

proposes the following seedlings to guide the 

planning of interventions in this area. 

Seedling 1: Leadership begins in 

communities 

For the majority of women smallholder farmers, 

the decisions that most impact their day-to-day 

lives are made at the household and 

community levels. In addition, many women 

farmers who have become influential at higher 

levels first honed their leadership skills in their 

communities. Therefore, interventions at the 

grassroots level are key to enhancing women 

smallholder farmers’ access to leadership and 

ability to make decisions to improve their lives. 

All over the world, women smallholder farmers 

organize themselves in small, informal groups at 

the community level. The structure and goals of 

these groups differ based on local cultures and 

contexts, but they often take the form of savings 

groups or informal cooperatives. These groups 

facilitate collective action, which is a powerful 

way to empower women smallholder farmers 

as leaders. 21 Experiences with informal women’s 

groups suggest that if they become particularly 

successful or influential, men often take an 

interest, which sometimes leads to them taking 

over. A study of 65 farmer groups in Uganda 

found that the larger the group, the less likely it 

is to have women in leadership positions, and 

https://agrilinks.org/post/measuring-womensdecision-making-power-agriculture. 

18 

ActionAID, 2021. Advancing the Rights of 

Women Smallholder Farmers. Policy Brief. 

https://actionaid.org.au/wpcontent/uploads/2021/07/Advancing_the_rights_ 

of_women_farmers.pdf 

19 

Mobarok, M.H., Skevas, T., and Thompson, W., 

2021. Women’s empowerment in agriculture and 

productivity change: The case of Bangladesh rice 

farms. PLoS ONE 16(8). 

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255589; 

Williamson, 2021. 

20 

Bell, A.R., et al., 2023. Financial incentives often 

fail to reconcile agricultural productivity and pro- 

conservation behavior. Communications Earth & 

Environment (2023) 4:27, 

https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-00689-6. 

21 

IFAD, 2015. Promoting the leadership of women 

in producers’ organizations: lessons from the 

experiences of FAO and IFAD. 

https://www.ifad.org/en/web/knowledge/- 

/publication/promoting-the-leadership-of-womenin-producers-organizations-lessons-from-theexperiences-of-fao-and-ifad?; 

Umutesi, V., 2021. 

Promoting female leadership in agricultural value 

chains. BEAM Exchange. 

https://beamexchange.org/community/blogs/202 

1/4/8/female-leadership-in-agricultural-valuechains/. 

13


the less influence any women leaders have on 

decision-making. 22 

Supporting informal, local-level women’s 

groups and empowering women to stay in 

charge once they achieve success and formalize 

would be a highly effective strategy to foster 

women’s leadership. However, these groups’ 

informality and the fact that they tend not to 

form part of larger structures (i.e., they are not 

organized into umbrella associations) makes 

them difficult to reach. Working with them 

effectively requires a grassroots approach, 

extensive knowledge of realities on the ground, 

and engagement over longer periods. Large 

programs and international NGOs are not wellplaced 

to work at this level; to do this work at 

scale would require a multitude of small grants 

to a range of small, local organizations. This 

raises challenges related to logistics and the 

overhead costs associated with the 

management of large numbers of small 

contracts, though these could perhaps 

(partially) be addressed through the use of 

emerging technologies. Inspiration could also 

be drawn from, for example, vaccination and 

education campaigns, which have successfully 

reached even remote rural areas. 

Seedling 2: Empower women along 

value chains 

In the long term, the most sustainable way to 

empower women smallholder farmers to 

access leadership is to foster structures through 

which women can support each other. These 

can include the groups referred to in the first 

seedling, but another strategy is to connect 

women along agricultural value chains. 

LadyAgri works to organize and empower 

women in value chains of commodities, such as 

cocoa, where they are often thought to be 

absent but are more likely just not visible 

because they are not in charge of transactions. 

They encourage women in the value chain to 

empower women in other stages. For example, 

they help women buyers develop long-term 

supportive relationships with the women 

farmers who supply them. Buyers may provide 

small amounts of financial support that women 

farmers may need more than men, such as 

funding at the end of summer so that women 

do not need to empty their savings groups’ 

funds to pay for school supplies. Such initiatives 

strengthen the positions of both the farmers 

and the buyers. 

Women are underrepresented in formal 

contract farming schemes and producer 

groups. Companies with smallholder farmers in 

their supply chains can grow their supplier base 

by encouraging more women to join such 

groups. Companies can also support women to 

take up leadership positions on boards and 

committees and improve their effectiveness by 

introducing quotas, encouraging and 

supporting women to stand for election 

(through separate training, 

mentorship/championing of promising 

candidates), and explaining the importance and 

benefits of women’s representation to men. 23 

Consumers of agricultural products tend to be 

mostly women, and they can be mobilized to 

support smallholder farmers. Companies can 

work to enhance the traceability of their 

products and raise awareness of the roles 

women play in agricultural supply chains. One 

coffee exporter undertaking awareness raising 

among men about the benefits of women’s 

representation emphasized consumer interests 

as follows: “Because women make the majority 

of food purchases, consumers (mostly women) 

want to know that women producers at the 

other end of the supply chain are benefiting 

from their purchases.” 24 

22 

Nakazi et al., 2017. 

24 

Idem. 

23 

Chan & Barrientos, 2010. 

14


Seedling 3: Enhance the visibility of 

women smallholder farmer leaders 

As the members of the EVWA Council know 

from experience, there are many inspiring 

examples of women smallholder farmers 

achieving leadership positions and improving 

lives and livelihoods in their communities. 

However, most of these remain relatively 

invisible on a wider scale. Similarly, as LadyAgri 

has shown, women play important roles in all 

parts of agricultural value chains, but those roles 

go largely unacknowledged. Women farmers 

are also post-processors, buyers, and 

entrepreneurs, but the image that persists in 

most minds is of a woman toiling in a field. 

The stories of women in leadership and 

throughout value chains must be told, not only 

(or not even primarily) by and to international 

organizations and funders, but by the women 

themselves, to others like them who can be 

inspired. Role models are important; studies 

show that once an organization such as a farmer 

group has one woman in its leadership, it 

becomes much easier for others to join her. 25 

Where no women leaders are present, role 

models from outside the organization can 

encourage women to pursue leadership 

positions. 

It is important to choose the right medium to 

reach smallholder farmers. The UN Food and 

Agriculture Organization (FAO) established 

‘Dimitra Clubs’, which allowed women 

smallholder farmers to develop and feature in 

community radio programs discussing their 

concerns. This boosted their self-confidence, 

led to greater awareness of their concerns, and 

enhanced recognition of participating women 

as community leaders. 26 

Seedling 4: Amplify virtuous cycles 

If women smallholder farmers gain access to 

land, resources, and income-generating 

activities, this gives them more power to 

engage in decision-making, and vice versa. 27 

Several studies, including one among women 

farmers in Bangladesh, found that enhanced 

empowerment of women as decision-makers at 

the farm level was associated with increased 

productivity, efficiency, use of inputs such as 

improved seeds, and adoption of new 

technology. 28 Studies have also found that 

when women have more influence on 

household decision-making, households grow 

more and a greater variety of food crops and 

more nutrient-dense crops. This benefits both 

food security and resilience. Participation of 

women in community groups and asset 

ownership by women was also associated with 

the growing of more food crops. 29 

However, any progress in women’s 

empowerment is fragile, and virtuous cycles can 

become vicious ones in times of socioeconomic 

stress. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in 

reduced access to leadership by women 

smallholder farmers (and reduced farm 

productivity generally) because extra care 

burdens due to the closure of schools and the 

vulnerability of the elderly increased their 

already disproportionate unpaid work burdens. 

This also led to increased dependence on men 

for income and food, and, in some cases, to 

increased vulnerability to violence. More 

support and more comprehensive planning 

and policymaking are necessary to prevent 

25 

IFAD, 2015. 

26 

Idem. 

27 


28 

Mobarok, Skevas & Thompson, 2021; 


29 

Connors, K. et al., 2023. Women’s 

empowerment, production choices, and crop 

diversity in Burkina Faso, India, Malawi, and 

Tanzania: a secondary analysis of cross-sectional 

data. Lancet Planet Health 2023; 7: e558-69. 

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/articl 

e/PIIS2542-5196(23)00125-0/fulltext 

15


pandemics and other shocks resulting in such 

setbacks to gender equality. 30 

Seedling 5: Create a more permanent 

space for discussions on gender 

equality in smallholder farming 

Over the course of six discussions, the EVWA 

Council has touched upon many issues faced by 

women smallholder farmers. The Council’s 

composition of smallholder farmers and their 

representatives as well as high-level experts and 

leaders from international organizations, 

governments, NGOs, and the private sector 

allowed for very direct and productive 

discussions, the results of which have been 

presented in the three policy briefs. 

As climate change increasingly threatens 

smallholder agriculture, addressing inequalities 

and thereby enhancing the productivity of the 

women farmers who grow the majority of 

Africa’s food becomes ever more crucial. The 

Council believes that the importance and 

complexity of the issue of gender equality in 

smallholder farming and agricultural value 

chains merits a more permanent space for 

discussion and the elaboration of catalytic 

interventions. As 2026 has been declared the 

Year of the Woman Farmer, we call on 

governments, international organizations, 

NGOs, and the private sector to come together 

and mark this year through the establishment of 

a permanent body for the empowerment of 

women smallholder farmers. 

Facilitators 

Anna Tykhonenko, Program Officer, BKMC 

Maja 

BKMC 

Markus, Communications Associate, 

Maria van Veldhuizen, Consultant 

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BAN Kl-MOON CENTRE 

for Global Citizens 

P.O.B. 0018 1037 Vienna, Austria 

office@ba n ki moon centre.erg 

www.bankimooncentre.org 

¼ l!nl f@ G @bankimooncentre 

htt ps ://ban ki moo nee nt re .org/ evwa

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