Liberia: Actors Want Women’s Rights Mainstreamed in Agriculture, Land Sectors

Mar 26, 2022 | Varney Karmara
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Stakeholders have agreed to mainstream gender equity and inclusion across the agriculture, land, and forestry sectors in Liberia.

The enforcement of gender policies across these sectors has been largely hampered by access to information, a coordinated strategy, traditional practices and norms, capacity, and budgetary constraints.

Women in Liberia make important contributions to both the agriculture and land sectors, but they continue to play limited roles in leadership structures determining the fate of these industries. They produce over half of the country’s food crops, creating 60 percent of agricultural products, and carrying out 80 percent of trading activities in rural areas, studies showed. Meeting the global food needs increasingly depends on the mainstreaming of gender issues into the agriculture and forestry sectors, and would enhance the resource capability of women, according to a World Bank report, but that has been missing.