Food: Women farmers are invisible actors in hunger drama
11 October 2006
World News
Women shoulder more and more of the burden of providing food in many parts of the world as they plant, plough, harvest and fish, gather fuelwood, fetch water, cook, breastfeed, and sell foodstuff.
But although they are the main actors in feeding the world and fighting hunger and malnutrition, most of their work is unpaid or grossly underpaid and they have little or no access to land, credit, training and technology.
Far too little attention is paid to alleviating women's drudgery in rural areas, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned on the occasion of World Food Day, 16 October 1998.
The theme of this year's World Food Day and FAO's international television campaign TELEFOOD is 'Women Feed the World' - a reminder to governments
and the international community that the situation of women in rural areas needs to be improved to ensure food security and reduce the number of undernourished people - now 800 million.
Keywords: women farmers
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