uN Commission on the status of women meets in new york

Every year, representatives of the UN's 45 Member States gather at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to evaluate progress on gender equality and formulate concrete policies to promote women's empowerment around the world. This is the Commission's 56th annual meeting, and its priority theme for 2012 is the empowerment of rural women, their role in poverty, hunger eradication, development and to identify the current challenges they face.

With almost 70% of employed women in South Asia and more than 60% of employed women in sub-Saharan Africa working in agriculture, improving women's access to productive resources is central to addressing hunger.  On average women make up about 43% of the agricultural labour force in developing countries and evidence indicates that if these women had access to the same productive resources as men they could increase yields on their farms by 20 to 30%. This simple step of equal access would raise total agricultural output by between 2.5 - 4% which would in turn reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12 - 17%.

Promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women is not lip service to a politically correct cause it is an economic and social necessity.