PoetCom

Gender Equality & Social Inclusion

The organic movement has the potential to further fair and equitable opportunities by advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment in Pacific countries and territories.

Organic can build an alternative model to conventional agricultural systems using traditional practices and knowledge combined with the newest scientific knowledge.

How Organic Empowers Women

Growing evidence shows that organic provides opportunities for women’s empowerment in a way that industrial agriculture has not. The organic sector’s holistic fundamentals often create more equitable gender distribution of labour, benefits and power that challenge unequal traditional agricultural systems. Women’s involvement and gender equality in organic value chains is promoted through:

Advancement of smaller scale family farms that have fewer mechanical processes.

Decrease in reliance on commercial inputs.

Increased focus on crop diversity, food security and quality nutrition over commodity crop production.

Emphasis on traditional skills and knowledge, local markets and value addition products.

Stronger attention to health, wellbeing and social implications as well as fair trade working conditions (i.e.,
better payment/price premiums).

Greater space for innovative ideas coupled with environmental sustainability principles.