Rural women's network

Rural women's issues and initiatives

The rural areas of the European Union are strikingly varied in terms of social and economic structure, geography and culture. Rural women too are not a homogeneous group. They have different roles and occupations, on farms and in family businesses, in employment and in community activities. Their needs and interests differ too, particularly from one age group to another, and depending on the size and composition of their family and age of their children. The economic and social changes that rural areas are undergoing do not affect all women in the same way: offering opportunities to some, to others they bring difficult challenges.
Women are also seeking a better balance in the division of labour in the domestic household, need encouragement for their personal and professional development and more support in their bid to achieve financial independence, and to participate fully in decision-making. The challenge for rural development programmes is to identify the constraints on women's full participation in economic and public life at local level, and to develop specific initiatives in their favour.
The recent economic changes highlighted in the introduction are particularly affecting women's participation in the labour market. The most extreme changes are being experienced by women in the Southern Member States, where the labour market has undergone the biggest transformation. Formal employment - often full or part-time factory work in the food processing industry or home-working for textile industries - is replacing unpaid family farm labour. In Italy and Portugal increasing numbers of women are becoming self-employed farm managers. In Spain, casual or seasonal wage-work is a growing feature
of female employment in rural areas.
Quality employment opportunities are few and far between in most rural areas. Women's employment in low-paid and low-status jobs, where they work below their skills and abilities, is frequent. Increasingly, only temporary or part-time jobs are available. Part-time jobs may suit some women, particularly those with young children, but in general there is a call for
employment with better conditions and longer hours.
The growing numbers of farms owned by women result mostly from recent developments: their partner seeks off-farm employment to supplement the income from the farm, and its ownership is transferred to the woman. In recent years this has become particularly common in the southern countries of the European Union.
Peasant and indigenous women contribute tremendously to food and agricultural production through their toil, knowledge, and their nurturing capacities.  They are involved in all aspects of agriculture – sowing, nurturing and protecting crops from pests, harvesting, selecting and preserving seeds for the next crop, soil enrichment and so on.  They use local ecological resources in a balanced way and then regenerate these resources.  Learning by experience, and experimenting and innovating when faced with problems, they have developed a vast amount of knowledge and varied skills in agriculture over generations, and have provided food security to millions of families. Rural women rarely own land, lack access to financial and social assets, have fewer opportunities to improve their skills and knowledge, and are rarely able to access public decision making processes. 
Generally high in most rural regions, unemployment levels are often higher for women than for men. Cutbacks and centralisation of public and private services are frequent in the northern Member States, while in the South the problem stems more from the decline in traditional manufacturing industries. Unemployment figures, anyway, do not reveal the full
number of women seeking work, but only those who are registered unemployed. Many women who have no right to benefits, or who do not register because there are no job opportunities, fall outside the statistics.