Rural women in Georgia: Insights from the Country Gender Assessment
© Ekaterine Kolesnikova
09/01/2026
Sopo, a 31-year-old from Tsalka, is taking her first steps towards building a small cheese business with her mother.
“I’m planning to start a small cheese making business,” she says. “Step by step, my mother and I are laying the foundations for a family-run business focused on quality. Supporting other women farmers really matters to me because I know how difficult it can be to access information. I try to help as best I can by sharing details about projects, training, exhibitions or anything else that might help their businesses grow.”
A teacher by profession, Sopo founded the non-profit Tsalka Development Center and runs a small guesthouse in the same building. For all her resilience and the active role she plays in her community, Sopo is keenly aware of the barriers women face: “What I see around me, not just in the statistics, is that the biggest challenge for women is the lack of land ownership. Without land of our own, it’s much harder for us to start or grow agricultural activities, access financing, and develop our businesses independently.”
While Georgia has made a strong commitment to protecting women’s equal right to land ownership, everyday realities often tell a different story. Sopo’s experience reflects a wider pattern highlighted in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Country Gender Assessment (CGA) of Georgia, updated in 2025. Without being formally recognized as farmers, and without greater land ownership, co-ownership and access to finance, women engaged in agriculture will continue to have limited opportunities. Secure access to and control over land and other assets, alongside efforts to address discriminatory inheritance practices and simplify administrative procedures, are critical to advancing women’s economic empowerment, agency and recognition as farmers.
Although rural women in Georgia play a vital role in supporting their families and sustaining local food systems, their contributions often remain unrecognized and undervalued. © FAO/Guram Saqvarelidze
The CGA notes encouraging progress in recent years, including improved collection of sex-disaggregated data by the National Statistics Office of Georgia and greater efforts by international organizations to promote women’s empowerment. These include setting up women-focused Farmer Field Schools and integrating gender equality into national agricultural, climate and environmental strategies. Yet socioeconomic barriers and discriminatory practices persist.
Georgia’s first time use survey, published in 2022, found that 90.3 percent of rural women performed unpaid domestic work, more than twice the rate of men. On average, rural women spent 3.6 hours per day on household tasks, about five times more than men. Mothers in rural areas also spent six times more time on childcare than fathers. These disparities limit women’s opportunities for education, formal employment and leadership, and contribute to the persistent gender pay gap in agriculture.
“Reducing women’s burden of unpaid care and domestic work, so that they have more time to engage in paid work, is key to women’s empowerment,” says Kyial Arabaeva, Technical Advisor and Rural Development Officer at FAO.
“Challenging cultural norms – not only around women’s land inheritance but also around their role in decision-making on land use – and promoting their participation at higher levels of agricultural value chains is also essential as a way of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals”.
Darejan, a 52-year-old woman from the village of Sori, offers a glimpse into the challenges she encounters in her daily routine.
“The day starts with work and ends with work. When you have no one to help, you have to do everything yourself,” she says. © David Khelashvili
“People call me a ‘hero mother’. As a single mother, I bear the burden of supporting my family, yet I still do everything I can to give my child a happy life. In the summer, when visitors come to our village, they call me to buy fresh vegetables and meat. I also sell my products at the municipal market. Earning your own money and not being reliant on anyone else – that’s the greatest happiness.”
The CGA warns that without policies to redistribute unpaid care, such as accessible childcare, improved rural infrastructure and labour-saving technologies, rural women’s empowerment will remain out of reach. It emphasizes the need to prioritize sex-disaggregated data collection, capacity building and enabling policies as a way of improving women’s access to resources and opportunities.
In recent years, FAO and its partners have supported women like Darejan and Sopo through rural development and entrepreneurship initiatives. Darejan is a beneficiary of FAO’s Agriculture and Rural Development Project in Georgia, supported by the Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC), which provided labour-saving equipment to help ease her daily workload. Sopo, meanwhile, benefits from FAO's matching grants scheme and food safety trainings implemented under the European Neighbourhood Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (ENPARD–4), funded by the European Union and Sweden. With FAO’s support, she has hosted extension trainings and strengthened her agricultural and entrepreneurial activities.
“In Georgia, FAO continues to work closely with key ministries and government partners to strengthen gender-responsive and inclusive rural development policies. Significant progress has already been made, notably by increasing rural and young women’s participation in agriculture,” says Iamze Mirazanashvili, Programme Assistant and Gender Focal Point at FAO. “Nevertheless, more must be done to highlight the contributions of women farmers and to address the persistent challenges they face, including inadequate recognition and support across agriculture, forestry, fisheries and related sectors.”
As 2026 marks the International Year of the Woman Farmer, these findings come at a moment of growing international and national urgency. The empowerment of women and girls is a core human rights priority, central to achieving the 2030 Agenda. In Georgia, this calls for stronger state commitments, empowered rural women’s organizations and grassroots initiatives, alongside expanded access to social protection, skills development, digital tools and transport. Together, these measures can help build more inclusive, resilient and prosperous communities across the country.