Chosen to highlight the significant contribution women make toward household and national food security, the theme will also be the focus of FAO's TeleFood hunger awareness and fund-raising event. The role of women in agriculture was underscored at the 1996 World Food Summit, where 186 countries, signing the Summit's Global Plan of Action, agreed to ensure an enabling political, social and economic environment designed to create the best conditions for the eradication of poverty and for durable peace, based on full and equal participation of women and men. According to FAO, globally, women produce more than half of all the food grown. In Africa, they produce up to 80 percent of all basic foodstuffs and they provide between 50 to 90 percent of the labor for rice cultivation in Asia. Women in rural areas are almost exclusively responsible for the nutrition of their children.
Women are also the principal producers and processors of food for their families.
In much of the world, women spend up to five hours a day collecting firewood and water and up to four hours preparing food. In addition, says FAO, rural women provide a significant amount of the labor for farming. After harvest they are almost exclusively responsible for operations such as storage, handling, stocking, marketing and processing. With more men migrating to urban areas in search of work, women carry an even heavier burden as they also become the head of household. Work in the household is often considered part of a woman's duties as wife and mother, not an occupation to be accounted for in the national economy.