SIs Newslog - International Day of Rural Women: UN Womenwatch special feature on rural women and development

Saturday, October 23, 2010

International Day of Rural Women: UN Womenwatch special feature on rural women and development

To coincide with International Day of Rural Women – commemorated every year on 15 October -, Womenwatch launched an updated online feature on “Rural Women and Development” last week ( http://www.un.org/womenwatch/feature/idrw/ )

The International Day of Rural Women directs attention to both the contributions that women make in rural areas and the many challenges they face. Established by the General Assembly in its resolution 62/136 of 18 December 2007, this international day recognizes “the critical roles and contribution of rural women, including indigenous women, in enhancing agricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty.” Rural women form the backbone of the agricultural labour force across much of the developing world. According to the 2009 ILO Global Employment Trends for Women report, globally, more than a third of the female workforce is engaged in agriculture while in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, more than 60 per cent of all female employment is in this sector.

You are kindly invited to visit http://www.un.org/womenwatch/feature/idrw/ to view the thematic portal, which includes the SG's message for the 2010 commemoration (in all official UN languages); a new feature article “Investing in rural women contributes to food security” provided by FAO; and links to resources on other UN websites, such as IFAD’s recent publication "Report on the Special Session of the 2010 Farmers’ Forum, Promoting Women’s Leadership in Farmers’ Organizations and Rural Producers’ Organizations."

The updated online feature/portal on Rural Women and Development complements Womenwatch’s comprehensive directory of UN resources on gender equality and women’s empowerment and Womenwatch’s UN system-wide gender equality newsfeed at http://www.un.org/womenwatch/ungen/.

Womenwatch (http://www.un.org/womenwatch) is an inter-agency project managed by the Division for the Advancement of Women (now part of UN Women) on behalf of the United Nations Inter-agency Network on Women and Gender Equality (IANWGE). It is a unique knowledge sharing platform, designed to provide access to Internet-based information on all the United Nations entities’ work and the outcomes of the United Nations intergovernmental processes on gender equality and women’s empowerment.

(Source: WomenWatch -United Nations)
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Saturday, October 23, 2010 7:35:40 AM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)