This publication was produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development. It was prepared by Cultural Practice, LLC for JBS International, Inc in 2013.
From the report:
This report provides an overview of gender issues in the agriculture and agribusiness sector in the Europe and Eurasia (E&E) region. It is based on a desktop study of scholarly, government, and project-related documents from 13 countries: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo, Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, and Ukraine. The purpose of the report is to identify the gender issues that exist and to explain their importance for the development and operation of agricultural value chains in E&E.
Agriculture remains an important sector of the E&E region economies, although it is now smaller in size and scope than it was prior to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Today, although contributing less than the service sector to the GDP in most countries, the agricultural sector still employs a significant percentage of people in both formal and informal employment, particularly in rural areas. It continues to offer avenues for growth today and in the future, especially if value-added food processing and other agribusinesses in the agricultural value chain are taken into account.
Women across the E&E region today have more limited access than men to resources for agricultural production (e.g., land, inputs, and information) that are the prerequisites to fully participating in the agricultural economy. These gender disparities limit women’s ability to enter or improve their performance at different nodes of agricultural value chains.
