FAO releases most comprehensive dataset to date on women in agrifood systems

Rome - The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has released its most comprehensive dataset to date on women in agrifood systems, providing governments, researchers, development partners and practitioners with a powerful new tool to better understand inequalities, monitor progress, and design more effective policies and investments that address the needs of women and men.

The FAOSTAT Gender in Agrifood Systems Domain was launched on Wednesday in fulfilments of its commitment under the Commit to Grow Equality initiative. It also serves as a key contribution to the International Year of the Woman Farmer 2026, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly to recognize the essential contributions of women across agrifood systems and accelerate action to address the persistent inequalities they continue to face.

Women play vital roles at every stage of agrifood systems - from production and processing to distribution and trade. Yet they continue to face greater barriers in accessing land, resources, services, technologies, finance, and decision-making opportunities.

Addressing these challenges effectively requires robust, comprehensive data spanning the multiple - and often interlinked - dimensions of discrepancies between women and men. Without this, the policies, programs and accountability mechanisms needed to drive meaningful change for women in agrifood systems cannot be effectively designed, implemented or measured.

"The FAOSTAT Gender in Agrifood Systems Domain gives us a powerful new foundation to make women's contributions visible, to track inequalities with precision, and to design policies that unlock the full potential of women across agrifood systems," FAO Chief Economist Maximo Torero said.

The new Gender Domain directly addresses this challenge by bringing together harmonized, internationally comparable, sex-disaggregated data, enabling gaps between women and men to be tracked over time and allowing policymakers to target interventions where they are most needed.

"In short, this is not just a statistical platform - it is a tool for accountability and action," Torero said.

The five domains of the Gender Suite indicators

The dataset is organized into five domains, with indicators spanning the 2000-2024 period. Together, they provide a systemic view of differences between women and men, where outcomes in one area both shape and are shaped by constraints in others. For example, limited access to assets can reduce productivity and earnings, while social norms can restrict access to education and labor market participation.

Key findings across the five domains:

• Economic participation and incomes: Women account for 42 percent of the global agrifood systems workforce (1.37 billion people) – a share largely unchanged since 2000. Despite their strong presence, women are more likely to work in informal or self-employed roles and to earn less than men.
• Assets and services: Women face persistent gaps in access to land, credit, water and technology. In 85 percent of countries where data is available, women have lower ownership or secure tenure rights than men over agricultural land. Women also have lower smartphone ownership rates, highlighting digital divides.
• Education: Gaps between women and men in basic education have narrowed – and in some cases reversed – but disparities persist at higher levels and in rural areas. Gains in education have not translated into equal labor market outcomes, showing education alone is not enough.
• Agency and social institutions: Discriminatory laws, social norms and expectations continue to constraint women’s opportunities. According to OECD SIGI data, these constraints are lower in Europe and the Americas and higher in Africa and Asia. Across all countries measured, women spend more time on unpaid domestic work than men – from 2 to 20 percentage points more.
• Food security and nutrition: Women consistently face higher rates of moderate and severe food insecurity globally, with 63.4 million more women than men aged 15+ experiencing food insecurity in 2024. The gap between women and men in this domain widened during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean.

"The FAOSTAT Gender Domain gives us a powerful new foundation to make women’s contributions visible, track differences with precision, and design policies that ensure agrifood systems work for women and benefit everyone," Torero said. “Because when we invest in equality between men and women in agrifood systems, we are not only advancing fairness, we are strengthening productivity, resilience, and food security for all.”