Closing Gender Gaps for Resilient Agrifood Systems

As the world marks the 2025 International day of Rural Women and approaches the International Year of the Woman Farmer, we highlight a new study co-authored by ICARDA’s Senior Gender Scientist Dr. Dina Najjar and Dr. Daniel Amok at the Trent School of the Environment, Trent University, and funded by CGIAR, underscores the urgent need to place women at the heart of agrifood systems governance.

Agrifood systems will not be able to withstand climate change as long as women’s needs and knowledge are ignored,  concludes a study that underlines the extent to which women are marginalized in decision-making structures at household, community and institutional levels despite their critical roles as producers, natural resource managers, and custodians of local knowledge.

“Empowering rural women in agrifood governance is both a matter of justice and a practical necessity for achieving food security, climate resilience, and sustainable development,” emphasizes Dr. Dina Najjar.

This study comes at just the right time, as today the world marks the 2025 International Day of Rural Women with the theme “Rural women sustaining nature for our collective future: Building climate resilience, conserving biodiversity, and caring for land towards gender equality and empowerment of women and girls”.