Topic: 2024-Gender Equality in Rural Areas
Country: Saudi Arabia
Delegate Name: Raj Bayyapuneedi
Rural women play a critical role in agriculture and rural economies globally, making up 36 percent of all agricultural workers.
Despite this, their roles and potential are all too often undermined by gender inequalities. Discriminatory social norms, legal frameworks and institutions restrict women’s rights, independence, autonomy and opportunities. This not only affects their well-being and economic empowerment, but also the resilience of food systems.
On average, women spend twice as much time as men on unpaid domestic and care work. The burden for rural women is even higher, as they lack access to equipment and labour-saving technologies.
Women are also less represented in rural organizations and institutions at both local and national levels, and thus are left out of decision making. Even within their homes, women’s voices often go unheard when it comes to financial and business affairs, including how to spend what they earn.
While there has been considerable progress in the past decades, women have less access than men to resources, including land, finance, education and essential farming inputs.
In Saudi Arabia, we have always struggled with gender equality
In Saudi Arabia, the adolescent birth rate is 8.3 per 1,000 women aged 15–19 as of 2021, down from 8.65 per 1,000 in 2009
.As of Dec-20, only 36.9% of indicators needed to monitor the SDGs from a gender perspective were available, with gaps in key areas, in particular: violence against women, unpaid care and domestic work and key labour market indicators, such as the gender pay gap. In addition, many areas – such as gender and poverty, physical and sexual harassment, women’s access to assets (including land), and gender and the environment – lack comparable methodologies for reguar monitoring. Closing these gender data gaps is essential for achieving gender-related SDG commitments in Saudi Arabia
We beleive that the arab states, the united states, egypt, jordan and japan can help us and work together with us to acheive this goal
