Women everywhere play a vital role in every aspect of growing, harvesting, processing, and marketing what we eat. They produce over half of the world’s food. But compared to men, they are often held back from their ambitions by tenure, customs, or laws that perpetuate unequal access to productive resources, credit, and extension services. Such widespread gender gaps have profound implications for household income, food and nutrition security, and childhood development.

Low female involvement in decisionmaking often makes women farmers and their children vulnerable to hunger and malnutrition, especially when crisis strikes. Gender-responsive approaches target existing disparities and strive to overcome or remove them. They highlight women’s contributions to agriculture and their critical role as agents of change. The empowerment of rural women can foster innovation and provide wide-reaching and longterm benefits, from household to global

UNCCD Action Guides series introduces agroecological approaches and regenerative practices that make food production systems more sustainable and resilient. The strategies and actions presented in these Action Guides are evidence-based, proven to be effective, and can be adapted to diverse settings.

Each Action Guide focuses on key elements that influence the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of food production: soil, gender, tenure, youth, drought and water scarcity, livestock and pastoralism, among others. Collectively, the series offers a systems perspective to guide regenerative actions for both small and large producers to promote nature-positive transformation.