Markets and Trade
Gender equality is essential to achieve FAO’s mandate of a world free from hunger, malnutrition and poverty. FAO is committed to achieving equality between women and men in sustainable agriculture and rural development for the elimination of hunger and poverty. The Markets and Trade Division (EST) contributes to FAO’s objective to ensure that women and men have equal rights and access to agrifood markets, trade and decent work, and equal control over the resulting income and benefits, in alignment with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
EST provides technical support to Members Countries in the implementation of evidence-based gender-responsive programmes, policies, strategies, and practices to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in agrifood markets, value chains and trade. This support includes gender analyses, gender-sensitive knowledge generation and dissemination, sharing best practices, multistakeholder dialogues, and capacity-development initiatives, among others. These activities contribute to FAO’s goal to ensure that promoting gender equality and eliminating gender-based discriminations are effectively pursued at all levels of FAO’s work programme and organizational culture, in compliance with the FAO Policy on Gender Equality 2020-2030.
Key messages
| Agrifood trade is an engine for sustainable and inclusive development,
leading to social and economic outcomes that are potentially conducive
to gender equality and women’s empowerment. |
| Gender inequalities create constraints to women’s access to domestic and
international agrifood markets and impact agricultural value chain
development, trade performance and economic growth. |
| By removing gender barriers to domestic and international trade, gender-responsive agricultural and trade policies foster a more gender-equitable trade environment and promote an inclusive market-led transformation of the agricultural sector. |
Highlight publications on gender
Gender publication collection
The Linkages between Migration, Agriculture, Food Security and Rural Development
01/08/2018
Understanding contemporary migration, both international and internal, remains a challenge. The decision by people to migrate either within their own countries or across borders is influenced by an intricate set of factors.
Ecuador’s banana sector under climate change
05/01/2016
At the request of the Ecuadorian Government, FAO undertook a technical assistance to generate an integrated assessment climate impacts on the banana value chain in support of the Ecuador initiatives towards sustainable and climate-adapted strategies. Both biophysical and socio-economic analyses were carried out using a team of FAO and international experts. Evidence was generated on: (i) banana suitability under climate change in Ecuador and other banana producing countries; (ii) climate impacts on yields and potential diseases incidence for bananas in Ecuador; (iii) carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions from production to consumption, including transportation and waste disposal. Policy analysis focused on the Government measures aimed at ensuring a fairer distribution of returns between laborers, plantations owners and exporters. The studies were carried between September 2012 and December 2013 and the key findings were presented at a national multi-stakeholder workshop held i n January 2014 in Guayaquil, Ecuador.