Gender Equality in Rural Areas

ECOSOC: UN Women

Topic: Gender Equality in Rural Areas

In many rural sections of both developed and developing countries, women are often isolated from social, economic, and technological resources, which may allow them to reach gender parity in these areas. Whether this is done as a consequence of physical separation or tradition in these areas, these difficulties cause women to have reduced or eliminated access to areas traditionally held by men, causing gender inequality to flourish. Efforts to make headway in these areas can be hampered by limited feasibility to collect data in these areas or data that is desegregated by sex.

Increasing access to technology, especially for communication, is essential to increase access to new fields of work and productivity in existing fields. According to a report produced by the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Rural Women, women make up 43 percent of the agricultural labor force in developing countries. Additionally, if these women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase individual farm output by 20 to 30 percent, raising total agricultural output in these countries by 2.5 to 4 percent. Education provides an underdeveloped and inaccessible social resource in many rural areas for women. Global statistics showcase that just 39 percent of rural girls attend secondary school, which is far fewer than 45 percent for rural boys. In urban areas, the distance is much less with 59 percent of girls and 60 percent of boys attending secondary school.

Along with limited access to resources, women in leadership positions are much less common in rural areas. Leadership positions for women can open doors for other women to have access to careers and resources they were previously barred from or had limited access to. Women’s medical care, especially reproductive care, is often less accessible than in urban developed areas, this is true across developed and developing countries. Less accessible medical care results from terrain and distance to advanced care facilities since rural care facilities have difficulty obtaining the resources and access needed to have advanced medical care. Thus, in emergencies, low access to necessary resources can be fatal. Social factors can also determine the level of care individual women are receiving, for their families or support systems can prevent them from getting needed medical care.

There are many different avenues for The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women to attempt to solve gender inequality in rural areas. However, this is a worldwide problem, thus no one thing will be a “one size, fits all” solution. Whether it’s through increasing public awareness of women’s health, creating or adding on to existing UN programs to incentivize new programs to increase women’s access to education, or developing ways to more evenly access medical care.

Research Links:
Sustainable Development Goal 5: Gender Equality:
https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/gender-equality/

Report on the Improvement of the Situation of Women and Girls in Rural Areas:
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4019030?v=pdf

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