“The gender wage gap in the agricultural sector is a symptom of deeper, intersecting inequalities and discrimination. By addressing discriminatory social norms and recognizing, reducing and redistributing women’s and girls’ unpaid care and domestic workloads, we are not only promoting gender equality and women’s and girls’ rights, we are also promoting sustainable development.”Jemimah Njuki
Chief, Economic Empowerment, UN-Women
[A2.1-A2.3] As the leading UN agency and global champion for gender equality and women's and girls' empowerment, UN-Women commits to working in partnership to close the wage gap in food systems through addressing discriminatory social norms and women's and girls' unpaid care and domestic work that act as barriers to their equal participation in and benefits from food systems transformation.
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Despite being central to food systems, women consistently earn less than men for the same work. FAO’s 2023 report, The status of women in agrifood systems, highlights that women in agricultural wage employment are paid 18.4 percent less than men, earning just USD 0.82 for every USD 1.00 men earn.
The gender wage gap in agriculture is driven by discrimination, differences in education, and restricted access to full-time employment. It reflects deeply embedded structural inequalities which limit women’s access to higher-paying jobs and leadership roles, thus keeping them from achieving financial independence. Discriminatory social norms also place the burden of unpaid care and domestic work on women, restricting their time, mobility, and ability to pursue economic opportunities. Without dismantling these barriers, women will remain undervalued and underpaid in agrifood systems.
As the leading UN agency for gender equality, UN-Women works to address economic inequalities, promoting the right to work and rights at work, including equal pay for work of equal value, and addressing women’s disproportionate share of unpaid care work. Through policy leadership, data collection, and programmatic support, UN-Women helps integrate gender-responsive policies in food systems, strengthen labour protections, and expand women’s access to decent work and social protection.
Through its increased investment in FAO’s CGE initiative, UN-Women includes the gender wage gap in its work on food systems transformation, recognizing that fair pay is about more than income: it is about autonomy, decision-making power, and economic justice. It is also co-leader, together with the International Labour Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, of the Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC), which works to foster an inclusive world of work, in which women and men receive equal pay for work of equal value across all countries and all sectors including the agricultural sector. By bringing together a diverse set of actors with different areas of focus and expertise, EPIC supports governments, employers, workers and their organizations in reducing the gender pay gap at the global, regional and national levels.
Across its triple mandate, UN-Women is working to address discriminatory social norms that constrain women’s time available for agricultural work as one factor leading to the gender gap in agricultural productivity and wages.21 These efforts range from normative work supporting the development of the Voluntary Guidelines on Gender Equality and Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment in the Context of Food Security and Nutrition to the operational work of recognizing, reducing and redistributing women’s unpaid care work in the context of climate-resilient agriculture.
This CGE commitment paves the way for improving women’s livelihoods, rights and resilience through higher wages, better working conditions, and increased access to social protection across agrifood systems. Closing the wage gap will not only improve the livelihoods of millions of women and their families but also create more resilient and sustainable agrifood economies that embed gender equality as a pillar of economic growth.
Required citation:
FAO. 2025. Commit to Grow Equality: investing in the future of women in agrifood systems – Progress report 2025. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd4123en
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