Rural women

Rural women are a fundamental part of rural communities around the world. They play an important part in rural society, providing care and being involved in number of economic pursuits such as subsistence farming, petty trading and off-farm work. In most parts of the world, rural women work very hard but earn very little.

Women often suffer discrimination because they are not allowed to have the same ownership of land as men. Most of what they earn does not directly stay in their control, because of unequal gender roles or discrimination.

Empowering rural women can help not only with alleviating the poverty of individual women and families, but also with empowering the entire community—changing access to education, employment and other benefits of rural development. To recognize this, the international community often sets international development goals that track investment and impact on lives of rural women, and the United Nations sponsors the International Day of Rural Women.

Poverty
Rural women are particularly disadvantaged, both as poor and as women. Women in both rural and urban areas face a higher risk of poverty and more limited economic opportunities than their male counterparts. The number of rural women living in extreme poverty rose by about 50 percent over the past twenty years. Women in rural poverty live under the same harsh conditions as their male counterparts, but experience additional cultural and policy biases which undervalue their work in both the informal, and if accessible, formal labor markets. The 2009 World Survey states that "women play an active role in agriculture and rural livelihoods as unpaid family labour, independent farmers and wage labour, often without access to land, credit and other productive assets."

Women's contribution to the rural economy is generally underestimated, as women perform a disproportionate amount of care work that often goes unrecognized because it is not seen as economically productive. Though in some nations cultural and societal norms prevent women from working outside the home, in other countries, especially in rural communities in Africa, women work as major food producers, improving household food and income security. Families in extreme poverty are even more dependent on women's work both inside and outside the home, resulting in longer days and harder work for women The feminization of poverty is a concept that is applicable in both urban and rural settings.