210 | IAASTD Global Report

Due to advances in ICT, international organizations such as FAO have been able to respond to the need for improved information management by providing technical assistance in the form of information management tools and applications, normally in association with advice and training (http://www.fao.org/waicent). Agricultural thesauri like AGROVOC are playing a substantial role in helping information managers and information users in document indexing and information retrieval tasks.

ICTs have widened the "digital divide" between industrialized and developing countries, as well as between rural and urban communities.

Goals
N, H, L, E,
S, D
Certainty
B
Range of Impacts
-2 to +3
Scale
G
Specificity
Wide applicability

Although ICT improve information flow, not all people have equal access to digital information and knowledge of the technology creating a "digital divide", a gap between the technology-empowered and the technology-excluded communities (http://www.itu.int/wsis/basic/faqs.asp; Torero and von Braun, 2006). Digital information is concentrated in regions where information infrastructure is most developed, to the detriment of areas without these technologies (http:// www.unrisd.org). This, together with the ability of people to use the technology, has had an impact on the spread of digital information (Herselman and Britton, 2002). The main positive impacts on poverty from ICTs have been from radio and from telephone access and use, with less clear impacts evident for the internet (Kenny, 2002).

3.2.3.4 Gender

Farming practices are done by both men and women, but the role of women has typically been overlooked in the past. Resolving this inequity has been a major concern in recent years. For social and economic sustainability, it is important that technologies are appropriate to different resource levels, including those of women and do not encourage others to dispossess women of land or commandeer their labor or control their income (FAO, 1995; Buhlmann and Jager, 2001; Watkins, 2004).

Women play a substantial role in food production worldwide.

Goals
N, H, L, E,
S, D
Certainty
B
Range of Impacts
-3 to +3
Scale
G
Specificity
Worldwide

In Asia and Africa women produce over 60% and 70% of the food respectively, but because of inadequate methodological tools, their work is underestimated and does not normally appear as part of the Gross National Product (GNP) (Kaul and Ali, 1992; Grellier, 1995; FAO, 2002b; CED, 2003; Quisumbing et al., 2005; Diarra and Monimart, 2006). Similarly, women are not well integrated in agricultural education, training or extension services, making them "invisible" partners in development. Consequently, women's contribution to agriculture is poorly understood and their specific needs are frequently ignored in development planning. This extends to matters as basic as the design of farm

 

tools. The key importance of the empowerment of women to raising levels of nutrition, improving the production and distribution of food and agricultural products and enhancing the living conditions of rural populations has been acknowledged by the UN (FAO, www.fao.org/gender).

Mainstreaming gender analysis in project design, implementation, monitoring and policy interventions is an essential part of implementing an integrated approach in agricultural development.

Goals
N, H, L, E,
S, D
Certainty
B
Range of Impacts
0 to +3
Scale
G
Specificity
Wide applicability

The substantial roles of resource poor farmers such as women and other marginalized groups are often undervalued in agricultural analyses and policies. Agricultural programs designed to increase women's income and household nutrition have more impact if they take account of the cultural context and spatial restrictions on women's work as well as patterns of intra-household food distribution. The latter often favors males and can give rise to micronutrient deficiencies in women and children. The deficiencies impair cognitive development of young children, retard physical growth, increase child mortality and contribute to the problem of maternal death during childbirth (Tabassum Naved, 2000). Income-generating programs targeting women as individuals must also provide alternative sources of social support in order to achieve their objectives. In Bangladesh, an agricultural program aimed at improving women's household income generated more benefits from a group approach for fish production than from an individual approach to homestead vegetable production. The group approach enabled women members to overcome the gender restrictions on workspace, to increase their income and control over their income and to improve their status. In many countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, privatization of land has accelerated the loss of women's land rights. Titles are reallocated to men as the assumed heads of households even when women are the acknowledged household heads. Women's knowledge, which is critical to S&T and food security, becomes irreparably disrupted or irrelevant as a result of the erosion or denial of their rights (Muntemba, 1988; FAO, 2005d).

The feminization of agriculture places a burden on women who have few rights and assets.

Goals
L, S
Certainty
B
Range of Impacts
-3 to 0
Scale
G
Specificity
Especially in the tropics

Progress on the advancement of the status of rural women has not been sufficiently systematic to reverse the processes leading to the feminization of poverty and agriculture, to food insecurity and to reducing the burden women shoulder from environmental degradation (FAO, 1995). The rapid feminization of agriculture in many areas has highlighted the issue of land rights for women. Women's limited access to resources and their insufficient purchasing power are products of a series of interrelated social, economic and cultural factors that force them into a subordinate role to the detriment of their own development and that of society as a whole (FAO, 1996). The contribution of women to food