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Smart
tech will only work for women when the
fundamentals for its uptake are in
place
By Ibrahim Thiaw,*
Under Secretary General of the United Nations
and Executive Secretary, UN Convention to Combat
Desertification
Bonn,
8 March 2019 - Science and technology
offer exciting pathways for rural women to
tackle the challenges they face daily.
Innovative solutions for rural women can, for
example, reduce their workload, raise food
production and increase their participation in
the paid labour market. But even the very best
innovative, gender-appropriate technology makes
no sense without access to other critical
resources, especially secure land rights, which
women in rural areas need to
flourish.
Land degradation and
drought affect, at least, 169 countries. The
poorest rural communities experience the
severest impacts. For instance, women in areas
affected by desertification, easily spend four
times longer each day collecting water, fuelwood
and fodder. Moreover, these impacts have very
different effects on men and women. In the parts
of Eritrea impacted most by desertification, for
example, the working hours for women exceed
those of men by up to 30 hours per
week.
Clearly, poor rural women
would benefit the most from new ways of working
on the land. Therefore, technology and
innovation must benefit women and men equally
for it to work well for society. Even more so at
a time when technology is becoming critical to
manage the growing threats of desertification,
land degradation and drought. In Turkey, for
instance, farmers
can get information on when to plant in real
time, using an application installed on a mobile
phone.(1)
However, in most part
of the world, the
adoption rates of technology are especially low
among rural women, possibly because very
often technologies are not developed with rural
women land users in mind.(2) For example, a
wheelbarrow can reduce the time spent on water
transport by 60 percent. But its weight and bulk
makes it physically difficult for most African
women to use. (3)
The demand
for technology design that meets rural women’s
specific needs is great. But developing
appropriate technology is not enough, if the
pre-requisites for technology uptake, in
particular access to land, credit and education,
are not in place.(4) Today, a web of laws and
customs in half the countries on the planet(5)
undermine women’s ability to own, manage, and
inherit the land they farm.
In
nearly many developing countries, laws do not
guarantee the same inheritance rights for women
and men.(6) In many more countries, with gender
equitable laws, local customs and practices that
leave widows landless are tolerated. For
instance, a
2011 study carried out in Zambia shows that
when a male head of household dies, the widow
only gets, on average, one-third of the area she
farmed before.(7) The impact of such changes on
the world’s roughly 258
million widows and the 584 million children who
depend on them is significant.(8) It leaves
us all worse off.
Globally, women
own less land and have less secure rights over
land than men.(9) Secure access to land
increases women’s economic security, but it has
far greater benefits for society more generally.
Women who own or inherit land also control the
decisions that impact their land, such as the
uptake of new technology.
A study
in Rwanda shows that recipients of land
certificates are twice as likely to increase
their investment in soil conservation relative
to others. And, if women got formal land rights,
they were more likely to engage in soil
conservation.(10) Initiatives that benefit rural
women do not stop at the household or local
levels. At scale, such investments have a huge
global impact.
If women all over
the world had the same access as men to
resources for agricultural production, they
could increase yields on their farms by 20 to 30
percent. This could raise the total agricultural
output in developing countries substantially at
national scales, and reduce
the number of undernourished people in the world
by 12 to 17 percent.(11)
If we
want to tackle the underlying causes of gender
inequality, to build smart and innovate for
change, then technology is good. Innovative,
gender appropriate technology is better. But
these will have little impact if the
pre-requisites for its uptake by women, in
particular access to land, credit and education,
are non-existent.
*The author
is Under-Secretary General of the United Nations
and Executive Secretary of the United Nations
Convention to Combat Desertification.
(4) FAO/IFPRI (2014): Gender
specific approaches, rural institutions, and
technological innovations, p. 13 et seq, p.
41.
(5) Huyer, Sophia, 2016: Closing
the Gender Gap in Agriculture, Gender,
Technology and Development 20(2) 105–116, p.
108.
(6) Huyer, Sophia, 2016: Closing
the Gender Gap in Agriculture, Gender,
Technology and Development 20(2) 105–116, p.
108.
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