Thumbnail Image

Regional Gender Equality Strategy and Action Plan for Europe and Central Asia (2016-2017)

Year of publication 2016

Place of publication Rome, Italy ;

Pages 16 p.

Publisher FAO ;

Product type Document

Edition 1

Synopsis (short abstract) Addressing gender equality is a fundamental part of FAO’s mandate. Social and economic inequalities between women and men undermine food security and restrict economic growth and advances in agriculture. The problems of hunger, malnutrition and rural poverty cannot be solved unless and until women and men are treated equally and gender disparities are challenged. In order to ensure that gender issues are adequately addressed at all levels of planning, and throughout implementation processes and each Strategic Objective, gender has been incorporated into the new FAO Strategic Framework as a Cross-Cutting Theme. This means that FAO recognizes the critical importance of the issue and is committed to gender equality across its full remit, including the areas of: food and nutrition security, agriculture and consumer protection, economic and social development, fisheries and aquaculture, forestry, natural resource management and environment, technical cooperation, knowledge exchange, researc h and extension.

Language English

Also available in:

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Thumbnail Image
    Booklet
    Regional Gender Equality and Action Plan for Europe and Central Asia 2019 – 2022 2019
    Also available in:
    No results found.
    This Regional Gender Equality Strategy for 2019–2022, developed by the FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia (REU), succeeds the first Regional Gender Equality Strategy and Action Plan 2016–2017, which was implemented successfully. This strategy, for the next four years, is based on the results of the FAO REU stock-taking exercises conducted in 2012 and 2017; and the feedback received at the 40th session of the European Commission on Agriculture (27–28 September 2017); and the feedback received from nearly 60 technical officers and staff, including gender focal points, at the brainstorming session of the Regional Initiative Coordination Meeting (12 September 2018) and the FAO REU regional gender mainstreaming workshop held on 18–19 October 2018 in Ankara, Turkey. The regional strategy and action plans outline main areas of REU gender work in the region, roles and responsibilities of the management, technical officers and gender specialists, and objectives and targets.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Book (stand-alone)
    Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific Gender Strategy and Action Plan 2017-2019 2017
    Also available in:
    No results found.
    The Regional Gender Strategy and Action Plan aims to provide focus for the FAO gender-related work in Asia and the Pacific and identify delivery mechanisms for the period 2017-2019. The Regional Gender Strategy and Action Plan encompasses work at both the regional and country level and is primarily intended for the FAO regional office for Asia and the Pacific, country offices, and project staff.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Book (stand-alone)
    Gender equality, social protection and rural development in Eastern Europe and Central Asia
    Insights from the region
    2016
    Also available in:
    This publication is a collection of articles written by economists, sociologists, and gender specialists and practitioners from twelve post-Soviet countries in Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia. It is unique in its effort to review and analyze the issues that are at the intersection of gender equality, social protection and rural development in the region. Overall, there is a lack of research, documented knowledge and public discourse on this subject and a multi-disciplinary approa ch is necessary for ensuring an in-depth and rigorous understanding of these intersecting issues in the context of the region. In supporting this publication, the FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia intends to draw attention to these issues as critical for the socio-economic development of the region, and raise greater awareness among all stakeholders and promote more research in this area. One of the main reasons why this subject remains on the periphery of research and discourse is the widespread public opinion that issues relating to gender have already been addressed and are, therefore, not priorities for rural development and social protection. Indeed, in the post-Soviet countries, women, including those located in rural areas, continue to enjoy relatively high levels of literacy and education and high economic activity rates. Furthermore, all countries, in an effort to sustain the achievements of the previous regime, have recognized the formal supremacy of internation al legal norms and UN standards, including in the area of gender equality and women’s rights. They have also been developing and implementing national policies towards achieving gender equality. However, if we look beyond the average numbers, and disaggregate available statistics by sex and by location wherever possible, we can see that in critical areas (for example, formal employment; access to social services such as childcare facilities and pensions; and participation in local governance, am ong others), rural women often emerge as the most disadvantaged group. There are also key issues, for example, access to productive resources (such as land, credits, agricultural equipment and extension services) that are of crucial importance to rural livelihoods but are not commonly viewed from a gender perspective. Across the region, women form a majority in the rural population, and a significant proportion of the labour force engaged in agriculture. However, the overarching trend in terms o f rural women’s employment is their engagement in informal, low-skilled and low-paid jobs. Women’s access to assets and productive resources is also significantly lower than that of rural men’s. Rural women’s participation in public life has reduced dramatically over the last decades, and generous social welfare is no longer a social norm.
Show more

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

No results found.