Towards more gender-responsive policies and budgets for agriculture and rural development

Empowering women in agriculture has the potential to significantly boost rural economies and foster rural development. The success of such interventions relies on inclusive and sustainable gender-responsive and employment-generating policies for long-term women empowerment. However, designed policies and measures to support agriculture and rural development often lack gender-responsive policy interventions that target rural women’s needs. The importance of gender equality has been recognized by the national institutions. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Water Economy of the Republic of North Macedonia has formed a Working group for gender equality and women empowerment. The Working group aims to support the monitoring and ex-ante or ex-post assessments (when ex-ante is not applicable) of the measures to propose subsequent gender-specific actions for women empowerment in agriculture in the forthcoming strategic policy documents for agriculture and rural development. However, there remains a significant and enduring disparity between women and men in the agricultural sector and rural communities. Women in the agricultural sector are significantly disempowered compared to men in terms of ownership of assets, input in decision-making, control over the use of income, and their leadership potential (58 out of 100 women are disempowered compared to 33 out of 100 men; 66.6% of women do not achieve parity with their partner) (Dimitirevski, et al. 2019). Women also tend to have lower bargaining power in intrahousehold decision-making. Nevertheless, our research findings indicate that simply providing additional financial support to marginalized or disempowered women may not yield the desired policy outcomes unless they have already achieved a certain level of empowerment (Nacka, Drichoutis & Nayga, 2023). This begs the question of whether current governmental programmes for support in agriculture and rural development are effective if there is a lack of ex-ante and ex-post assessments that will ensure that certain interventions can better address the long-term economic and social empowerment of the women in agriculture and rural areas. In 2019, the first gender-responsive measure (measure 115) was introduced in the National Program for Financial Support of Agriculture and Rural Development in the Republic of North Macedonia. The measure aimed to support women in agriculture (active members of agricultural households) with financial support (3000 EUR) for an investment that will add value to their production and skills and perform income-generated activities. The measure comprehensively covers the upfront investment cost that the applicant is required to make initially. Out of 403 women who applied for the support, 61,04% were eligible to receive the grant but only 48% continued the application procedure. However, the payment realization of the measure was completed in September/October 2022 benefiting 131 women from the first call in 2019. In 2022, the second call was announced, increasing the financial support to 6,000 EUR.

The project “Towards more genderresponsive policies and budgets for agriculture and rural development” aims to enhance the development and planning of agricultural and rural development policies in North Macedonia. The overall goal of the project is to support the future planning and development of agricultural and rural development policy and to contribute to an improved gender-responsive policy-making process for long-term women’s empowerment in agriculture. The project has identified three key outputs. By providing government officials and policymakers with evidencebased research, output 1 facilitates informed decision-making processes, ensuring that gender-responsive policy measures and budgets are integrated into national programs for agriculture and rural development. Output 2 focuses on capacity-building efforts, equipping officials and policymakers with the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively mainstream gender considerations and GRB within agricultural policies and programs. Finally, output 3 targets the empowerment of women in agriculture and rural areas by enhancing their abilities to access and benefit from policy measures that offer support and assistance in agricultural activities.

To support future planning and policy development for agriculture and rural development and to improve the process of creating gender-responsive policies for the long-term empowerment of women in agriculture