26/03/2010 Equality and Non-Discrimination
"Rural development, sustainable agriculture, food security, environment and the protection of cultural heritage cannot be achieved through efforts that ignore or exclude more than half of the rural population - women," participants agreed at a hearing on “the real situation of rural women in Europe", organised by PACE Equality Committee in Paris.
There is a great need for a systematic gender analysis and improvement of the laws and politics related to rural development, including infrastructure, housing, health and education, and support for gender-aware macro-economic policies in agriculture as well as women’s representation in governance of agricultural development programmes and of local government in rural areas.
Women should also be offered additional support to overcome existing inequalities in access to land, technology, know-how and credit, participants said. Training and capacity-building, including through e-learning, should focus on business management skills, micro-finance projects for poverty reduction and projects to create jobs in rural areas.
In order to assess the situation and the specific needs of rural women in Europe and the Euro-Mediterranean region, presentations at the hearing included experts’ views on the situation in Morocco, Russia and Germany. A report on “the real situation of rural women in Europe” will be prepared by Carmen Quintanilla Barba (Spain, EPP/CD) and is due for debate by PACE before the end of the year.