The International Day of Rural Women was established by the United Nations General Assembly in its resolution 62/136 of 18 December 2007, The day is observed every 15 october to recognize “the critical role and contribution of rural women, including indigenous women, in enhancing agricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty.” For that reason, the resolution urges the Member States, in collaboration with the organizations of the United Nations and civil society to implement measures that could improve rural women's lives, including the ones in indigenous communities.

FORUM: International Day of Rural Women 2020 - ''Building rural women’s resilience in the wake of COVID-19.''

The theme aims to create awareness of these women’s struggles, their needs, and their critical and key role in our society. Women and girls are disadvantaged in this pandemic, a problem aggravated in rural areas. Rural women, with a crucial role in agriculture, food security and nutrition, already face struggles in their daily lives. Restrictive social norms and gender stereotypes can also limit rural women’s ability to access health services. Furthermore, a lot of rural women suffer from isolation, as well as the spread of misinformation, and a lack of access to critical technologies to improve their work and personal life. Despite all of that, rural women have been at the front lines of responding to the pandemic even as their unpaid care and domestic work increased under lockdowns. The pandemic has also heightened the vulnerability of rural women’s rights to land and resources. Discriminatory gender norms and practices impede women’s exercise of land and property rights in most countries and COVID-19 widows risk disinheritance. Women’s land tenure security is also threatened as unemployed migrants return to rural communities, increasing pressure on land and resources and exacerbating gender gaps in agriculture and food security.

CAMPAIGN: Gender-responsive investments in rural areas have never been more critical.

Governments and society need to pay attention to their needs and invest in them, pursuing the political and socio-economic empowerment of rural women and supporting their full and equal participation in decision-making at all levels, take them into account in their policies, developing specific assistance programs, and advisory services to promote economic skills of rural women in banking, modern trading and financial procedures and providing microcredit and other financial and business services, or designing laws to ensure that rural women are accorded full and equal rights to own land and other property, just to name a few. All of these commitments are supervised, followed and supported by the UN through multiple agencies, like UN Women, FAO, ILO, World Bank, or IFAD, who try to fight from different perspectives (women's rights, investment, training...) for the goals and measures mark in the resolution.

Statement by the U.N. Secretary-General on International Day of Rural Women 2020; October 15th.

Rural women play a critical role in agriculture, food security and nutrition, building climate resilience, and managing land and natural resources. But many rural women suffer from discrimination, systemic racism and structural poverty.

The COVID-19 pandemic has now affected more than half the world’s women farmers with restrictions on movement, the closure of shops and markets, and disruption to their supply chains. Combined with challenges including increased unpaid care and domestic work and rising rates of gender-based violence, rural women are bearing some of the heaviest burdens of the pandemic.

Digital channels can offer a lifeline in rural areas, providing information on access to healthcare as well as agricultural updates. However, the gender digital divide is particularly wide for rural women, who make up just a quarter of users of digital agricultural solutions.

Helping rural women through the pandemic and building their resilience for the future will require solidarity and support from all.

Together, we must invest in rural women so that they have access to the healthcare, social protection and agricultural information services they need. We must close the digital divide and provide essential services to respond to the shadow pandemic of violence against women. And we must tackle the discriminatory land and inheritance laws and practices that make rural women vulnerable to losing their sources of income.

On the International Day of Rural Women, let us renew our commitment to rural women in all their diversity; increase our efforts to support them through the COVID-19 pandemic; and work with them to build their resilience to future crises.

Statement by the president of the General Assembly on International Day of Rural Women 2020; October 15th.

On this International Day of Rural Women, we must take action, to build the resilience of rural women, in the wake of COVID-19. Earlier this month, we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women. Despite gains made, women in rural areas, remain at a disadvantage, compared to their urban counterparts.

They continue to face persistent inequalities, discrimination and barriers, including: poverty; a lack of access to healthcare and critical infrastructure; as well as economic and political exclusion.

Rural women, are also among the first and worst affected by climate change, as they are on the frontlines of food security, through their key roles in agricultural production, land and resource management, and building climate resistance.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, women have shouldered, a disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic work. Rural women, are further marginalised by the digital divide, as the global economic crisis, threatens to erode the progress, made by those first-generation rural women in the workforce.

We cannot allow COVID-19, to undermine the empowerment of women anywhere. I call on all Member States, to bring rural women into decision-making fora, so that our responses meet their specific needs. This is critical, in order to fully implement the Beijing Declaration, and Platform for Action, for every woman, everywhere. Thank you!

U.N. General Assembly President.

Statement by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Women Executive Director, on the International Day of Rural Women 2020; October 15th.

In rural Xiaruoyao, China, 45-year-old pig farmer Yan Shenglian is part of her village’s COVID-19 management team, giving temperature checks and recording vehicle information at local checkpoints to help reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus. In Tanzania’s Iringa region, the outbreak of COVID-19 prompted 28-year-old Stella Nziku to join the Mufindi Women’s Network to raise awareness of gender-based violence. And in Itá, Paraguay, 50-year-old Mirian Cáceres is coping with the pandemic’s impact on her livelihood as a potter by organizing soup kitchens to alleviate hunger.

The vital roles of rural women as farmers, workers, entrepreneurs, community leaders and first responders during crises are key to building peaceful, prosperous and sustainable societies. The COVID-19 pandemic threatens to roll back these significant contributions, which is why we must double our efforts to build rural women’s resilience to current and future shocks.

Discriminatory gender norms and resource constraints compound the negative effects of COVID-19 on rural women’s lives. Already, before the pandemic, women across the world did more than three times the unpaid care and domestic work as men. In rural areas, this is exacerbated by lack of infrastructure and insufficient access to clean and safe water, sanitation and energy. Something as essential to hygiene and safety as frequent handwashing with soap, is no simple matter in many locations.

The gender digital divide in rural areas has magnified women’s and girls’ marginalization, limiting their access to distance education, essential services, digital finance and life-saving information during the crisis. The shadow pandemic of violence against women and girls, which has been rising in situations of lockdown, must also be overcome as a matter of urgency. Rural women and girls are even more at risk of experiencing violence yet less likely to receive the support they need due to lack of essential services, legal remedies and justice.

To address these gaps and respond to the pandemic, millions of rural women worldwide have organized protection, support and relief. In Liberia, the National Rural Women Association, with the support of UN Women, is communicating vital COVID-19 information in rural communities. Through the Rural Women’s Economic Empowerment joint programme, run by FAO, IFAD, UN Women and WFP, rural and indigenous women in Guatemala, Nepal and Kyrgyzstan are producing masks as a community service and to earn an income, and disseminating health information, preventative measures and essential goods.

To sustain the livelihoods and food security of rural women and their families during the crisis, social protection must be expanded in ways that intentionally respond to women’s needs. But this is not yet happening to the extent needed. UN Women and UNDP’s COVID-19 Global Gender Response Tracker shows that only 10 per cent of social protection and labour market measures are aimed at women – for example, cash transfers or food assistance that directly target women, support to women entrepreneurs and informal traders with grants and subsidized credits, or keeping childcare services open during lockdown to help relieve unpaid care burdens. It is critical that economic stimulus and recovery packages reach rural areas as well as urban settings to keep rural women and their households afloat.

On this International Day of Rural Women, our commitment to leave no one behind has never been more urgent. We must use this crisis as an opportunity to direct attention and resources to empower rural women and eliminate the long-standing obstacles to their progress, so that we can emerge from COVID-19 as a stronger, better balanced, resilient and caring society.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Women Executive Director,