In addition, women are unlikely to have land in their own name to use as collateral, or they cannot enter into a contract without male authorization. Women's legal rights to full membership in cooperative movements and collective organizations . This eliminates an important source of credit and participation for rural women in development at the grassroots level. Discriminatory wages . Women agricultural workers often lack legal recourse to ensure minimum living wages or to prohibit discrimination in gender biased wage rates.
Rural women suffer from an inferior legal status .
There is a real need to raise awareness of rural women's legal rights, enhance the identification and resolution of legal problems affecting women in agriculture and rural development, and enact laws which remove barriers to the advancement of women. FAO will work to incorporate gender in a more systematic manner in the design of agricultural and economic research and policy assistance. It will analyze the differential impact of national policies and market reforms on both women and men. FAO will provide technical support to improve the statistical data on women in the agricultural and rural sectors in national data collection programmes, including agricultural censuses and surveys. And it will assist in the creation of a legal environment that enables women to advance in terms of legal status and economic strength.