Investing in rural women can solve global hunger and poverty

As the world is struggling to recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the devastating global repercussions of the conflict in Ukraine, and intensifying effects of the ongoing climate crisis, effective pathways must be found to overcome the multiple challenges facing the world. There have been setbacks on the path toward achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, particularly to eliminating poverty (Goal 1) and realizing zero hunger (Goal 2).

The latest estimates from the World Bank show that, against the projected global rate of extreme poverty before the pandemic, between 75 million and 95 million more people are now living below the global extreme poverty rate ($2.15 per person/day). Furthermore, the UN estimates that the number of people suffering from hunger in 2021 increased by an additional 150 million since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, 12 percent of the world's population faced severe food insecurity.

Evidence shows that one of the most efficient and effective strategic actions to approach these issues include empowering rural women, as the efforts and talents of rural women are crucial to countering hunger and poverty. Rural women make up a quarter of the world population and close to half of the world's agricultural workforce, whereas in some developing contexts a large majority of farmers are women. Yet, globally, rural women are paid 25 percent less than men for doing the same work. Also, only 20 percent of landholders are women. Women are also more likely to suffer from poverty, hunger and the health effects of insufficient nutrition. Almost 30 percent of all women around the world suffer from anaemia.