Leveraging Voluntary Sustainability Standards for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture

In addition to the social attributes and opportunities associated with being male and female and the relationships between women and men and girls and boys, gender also refers to the relations between women and those between men. [...] Women’s empowerment is a multi-faceted concept that refers to “women’s sense of self-worth; their right to have and to determine choices; their right to have access to opportunities and resources; their right to have the power to control their own lives, both within and outside the home; and their ability to influence the direction of social change to create a more just social and economic order, [...] Food insecurity; unequal access to land, productive resources and education; the gender division of unpaid care and domestic work; gender discrimination in access to decision making and empowerment; and insecure and precarious conditions of agricultural work for women are barriers to gender equality that undermine women’s contributions to economic, environmental and social sustainability in their [...] VSSs have the potential to contribute to gender equality and women’s empowerment in two ways: (i) the effectiveness of the standard at integrating gender into its certification criteria; and (ii) the outcomes from applying their design through specific activities and interventions by certifying bodies, producers as individuals and groups, and the organizations that work with and assist them. [...] Introduction Leveraging Voluntary Sustainability Standards for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture 1.1 Purpose of the Guidebook This guidebook examines the potential of voluntary sustainability standards (VSSs) to support the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment in agriculture.