Women in Organic Agriculture
The IFOAM Study on Organic Agriculture and Women’s Empowerment and the IFOAM Training Module on Gender in Organic Agriculture

It is IFOAM’s goal to facilitate equal participation of women in the Organic Agriculture movement. In this context, a new IFOAM study investigates the ways in which OA can contribute to the empowerment of rural women, and identifies lessons learned for future work on the basis of a collection of analytical case studies from around the world.

Download the study

To complement the IFOAM Training Manual Series, the IFOAM Gender Module provides information on using a gender sensitive approach in Organic Agriculture. The training module describes the main gender issues for small-scale organic farmers in tropical regions. It is available for download in EnglishFrench  and  Spanish .

A day-long program of cultural events, presentations and discussions at IFOAM's 16th Organic World Congress (Modena, June 2008) highlighted the important roles the women play in organic agriculture. Download the report.

Compared with conventional agriculture, women have played a more prominent role in the development of Organic Agriculture and the organic sector organizations. It is often the woman in the farm household who initiates the process of conversion to organic. All over the world women are taking leading roles in the development of organic, as farmers, consumers, researchers, traders, and advisors, or in the organization of the organic sector (e.g. Southeast Brazil, Sweden, Thailand, USA).The IFOAM Africa Office (IAO) has collected case studies from women in organic agriculture in Burkina Faso, Senegal, Uganda, Ghana and Zimbabwe. Read the case studies on the IAO page.

Women Lead the Way Back to Organic Farming - a case study from Andhra Pradesh.

Handling Pesticides Associated With Greater Asthma Risk In Farm Women - American Thoracic Society 2007


Back to Organic Agriculture and Social Justice

IFOAM is constantly updating the information on this website. For comments or suggestions contact the Platform Coordinator
IFOAM - International Federation of Organic Agriculture | info@ifoam.org