In most countries, women do not own the land they cultivate. When land is owned by women, it tends to be smaller, less valuable plots that are also overlooked in statistics. Furthemmore, women are usually responsible for the food crops destined for immediate consumption by the household, that is, for subsistence crops rather than cash crops. Also, when data is collected for national statistics, gender is often ignored or the data is biased in the sense that it is collected only from males, who are assumed to be the heads of households. Rural women's invisibility is further accentuated by their lack of political power and social representation resulting from prevailing attitudes, gender-biased legal and social structures and illiteracy, among other factors.
Extension services reach women much less frequently than they do men.
Statistics indicate that women receive no more than 5 percent of extension resources. This lack of knowledge often hinders the progress of women and their contribution to food security, particularly at the family level. The combined effect of these handicaps is an increasing feminization of poverty. Since the 1970s, the number of women living below the poverty line has increased by 50 percent, in comparison with 30 percent for their male counterparts. A cost-benefit analysis carried out by the World Bank indicates that investment in the education of females has the highest rate of return of any possible type of investment in developing nations.