Women farmers are the backbone of agrifood systems, yet they still face systemic barriers to land, finance, markets, and decision-making spaces. With the UN declaring 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer, this policy brief by ActionAid USA and allies shares what it takes to close those gaps.
The brief draws on participatory reviews of seven projects supported by the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP). Farmer-led cooperatives strengthened women’s bargaining power and access to services. In a Cambodian organic rice project, women make up 71% of cooperative members. But women’s representation in national planning remained limited, and most projects did little to address unpaid care work.
The brief recommends that governments strengthen land tenure security for women, and that donors provide long-term, flexible funding to farmer organizations and women-led cooperatives.
[The findings are drawn from participatory reviews conducted in Burundi, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Lao PDR, Liberia and Tanzania by the Civil Society Partnership for GAFSP, a consortium commissioned by GAFSP. The Partnership consists of ActionAid International, the Eastern and Southern Africa Small-Scale Farmers Forum (ESAFF), the Asian Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Areas (AsiaDHRRA), and Coordination pour des Actions en Santé et en Développement d’Haïti (COSADH).]