For millions of women and girl children in the developing world, life means work. They toil long hours in the fields, tend domestic livestock and vegetable gardens, pick fruit, gather fuelwood, haul water, prepare and cook food, take care of children and manage household finances.
Men tend to produce crops for cash, or hire out their labour.
The bulk of the work on food produced for family and local consumption falls to women. In sub-Saharan Africa, women grow and sell 80 to 90 per cent of this food. Furthermore, up to 80 per cent of all fish and shellfish caught by local, artisanal fisherfolk in tropical Africa, Asia and the Pacific are cleaned, dried, smoked and marketed by women and children. In poor families nutrition is largely the responsibility of women. Most of this work is not included in national income accounts, yet most societies would fall apart without it.