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.
  

Below are some gender equality and social inclusion publications produced by POETCom:

• POETCom statement Organic stands for Gender equality.
• RMI Pandanus Value Chain
• Appendix 2 of the POETCom Strategic Plan (page 12)

POETCom co-authored this publications:

• Women of the land and sea at the 14th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women: Investing in inclusive and sustainable value chains identified as a regional priority (Flavia Ciribello, Gender and Value Chains Advisor, co-authored this publication with Natalie Makhoul, Margaret Fox and Josephine Kalsuak)

Below are some gender equality and social inclusion resources on women and agriculture; gender and organics; and gender and agricultural value chains:

Gender and Agricultural Value Chains

• Developing Gender Sensitive Value Chains – Guidelines for Practitioners
• Developing Gender Sensitive Value Chains – Guiding Framework
• Women of the land and sea at the 14th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women: Investing in inclusive and sustainable value chains identified as a regional priority
• Engendering Value Chain Development

Gender and Organics

• Organic Farming, Gender, and the Labor Process
• Organic Agriculture and Womens’ Empowerment
• Opportunities for Women’s Empowerment through Value Addition in Agri-food Chains
• IFOAM Training Module on Gender in Organic Agriculture
• Organic Consumers: What does Gender Have To Do With It?

Women and Agriculture

• Country Gender Assessment of Agriculture & the Rural Sector in Fiji
• Rural Pacific Island Women and Agriculture