Advancing women’s access to and control over resources through the VG-GEWGE

Time: 9:00–10:30 Accra | 11:00–12:30 Budapest | 12:00–13:30 Cairo

Through a series of webinars, FAO aims to raise awareness about the CFS Voluntary Guidelines on Gender Equality and Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment (VG-GEWGE), and explore how their policy and programmatic recommendations can be applied in specific priority areas. The webinars will facilitate cross-regional learning and exchange, enabling participants to share experiences and practical lessons on proven approaches that help address the gender gap in selected priority areas. The recommendations will be illustrated with evidence and examples of good practices from Sub-Saharan Africa, the Near East and North Africa and Europe and Central Asia, highlighting approaches that have been successfully applied in these regions and the changes they have helped to achieve.

The Voluntary Guidelines on Gender Equality and Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment in the context of food security and nutrition are global policy instruments that address gender-based challenges in food security and nutrition. They recognize that achieving gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment is critical to ending hunger and ensuring food security and nutrition for all. The Guidelines provide recommendations for countries to advance gender equality in the agrifood sector through transformative approaches that address the root causes of gender inequality, empower women and girls and engage men and boys.

Equally important, 2026 was declared the International Year of the Woman Farmer by the UN General Assembly, bringing into focus women’s crucial roles in agrifood systems, their contributions to food security and nutrition, as well as the challenges they face, and the actions needed to address them. In this context, the VG-GEWGE provide an important policy framework for translating the momentum generated by the International Year into concrete action, offering evidence-based recommendations to guide stakeholders' actions throughout the year and beyond.

The webinar provides an overview of the VG-GEWGE, evidence on gender gaps in women’s ownership and control over land and the underlying factors, and panellists discussion sharing best practices from the three regions, followed by a Q&A session. The panellists will focus on:

• Legislation, policies and programmes that have led to improvements in women’s ownership and control of land in specific countries
• Approaches for implementing policies and programmes that have demonstrated success in shifting social and customary practices restricting women’s land rights, including how communities were engaged and meaningfully participated in the process.
• Policies or programmes that empowered women to have increased decision-making power in land and natural resource governance.
  

Access to and control over resources

This focus area covers women’s access to and control over land, water, fisheries, forests, and other natural and productive resources, with particular emphasis on women’s access to and control over land resources.

The Voluntary Guidelinescall for strengthening and enforcing legal and policy frameworks that guarantee women’s equal rights to access, own, control, inherit, transfer, and use land and other productive resources. They call upon governments to ensure that women’s land tenure and property rights are protected regardless of marital status and that women receive equal and secure tenure rights through land titles, certificates or other legal mechanisms.

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