International Women's Day 2022
Gender equality and women’s prosperity are often hampered by gender bias. Lack of access and use of financial products by women is caused by financial constraints, but it is inherently biased due to social and gender norms. Biases in legal regulations and social norms prevent women from obtaining credit directly from formal financial institutions. They also usually don’t own or control assets and resources, especially land. As a result, their personal and their families’ prosperity is jeopardized.
Specifically, in the agriculture sector, women constitute 43% of the workforce, 79% of which depend on agriculture as their primary income source. Better access to finance and farming resources for women can significantly improve their productivity, yet lack of affordable finance often impedes them to acquire inputs and productive resources.
To enable women to use their potential and thrive, the CFC has, among others, SDG 5 (Gender equality) as a core SDG to be addressed when investing in a project. In our effort to #BeakTheBias, we interviewed the female co-leaders of two CFC-financed projects. From the cocoa sector in Colombia to coffee in Rwanda, we gained insight into female leadership in agriculture and how we can help #BreakTheBias.