The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released their Country Gender Assessment of the Agriculture and Rural sector in Sri Lanka on Thursday. The report details the ways in which women are insidiously discriminated against in the sector and offers recommendations to improve treatment of and remuneration for women.
Despite making up a large portion of the workforce and facing what Nina Brandstrup, FAO representation for Sri Lanka and Maldives, calls an “excessive work burden,” much of the labour that women in Sri Lanka’s food and agriculture sector engage in is “unskilled, unpaid, and unrecognised.” As a result, women work, but they do not reap the rewards of their labour.
Of employed women in Sri Lanka, 29.7 per cent work in the agriculture sector, but the majority practise subsistence agriculture in what is called the “small economy” and few reach higher paying jobs in the sector. One study done by the FAO found that only 20 per cent of the top three positions in mixed rural development societies are held by women.
As a result of what FAO describes as a combination of stereotypes, longstanding patriarchal culture, and lack of skills, women in agriculture are relegated to informal tasks—such as gardening nad housework, and are not protected by labour laws.
Their work is lower on the value chain and upward mobility hindered by the very fact that their low incomes and lack of land inhibit access to loans. It is a perpetual cycle of inequality.
Pulled up by high scores on education and health but brought down by low scores on “female empowerment,” Sri Lanka is ranked in the middle on global women’s rights indices. When it comes to education, one FAO representative explained, it is worth noting that women in the agriculture sector only have access to training for “micro-enterprises.” Such training does not give women the chance to gain familiarity with modern agricultural practices and move into more commercial (and thus higher paying) roles.
FAO’s recommendations include immersive gender sensitisation training for decision makers in the private and public sector, training programmes related to technical skills, and increased collection of gender segregated data. FAO representatives also commented that adequate budgetary provisions and allocations are essential.
But for some, this is not enough, to truly reach equality, actions must be taken beyond policy and training. In a panel discussion, Kamani Jindasa, an advocate for women’s rights, said sustainable actions will be “gender transformational” not just “gender responsive.” Gender specialist Siriyani Perera noted that there is no women’s movement in rural communities and stressed the importance of bringing rural women together.
As Vishaka Tillekeratne, a consultant for the FAO report, put it, “If we count the money spent on gender training, we should have revolutionised society by now.”
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