Kaya ng Babae: Women at the Heart of Agriculture

In celebration of Women’s Month and the International Year of the Woman Farmer

“Ang kaya ng lalaki, kaya rin ng babae.” (Women can do what men can do.)

– Joventina Ong, Bago City, Negros Occidental

When people imagine farming, the image we immediately picture is often men tending the fields. But the quote above carries two meanings at once: an affirmation of women’s capability and a response to long histories of exclusion in agricultural spaces.

As the United Nations declared 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer (IYWF 2026) and as we celebrate Women’s Month this March, the conversation is not only about honoring women farmers. It is also about examining why, in 2026, women still need to assert their capacity in systems where decisions about agriculture, seeds, and food production are made. If women can do what men can do and play key roles across agrifood systems from production to trade, the deeper question is: why are women still not treated as equal decision-makers? Why do many remain unrecognized?

According to an explainer released by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), women comprise approximately 43% of agricultural workers worldwide. Yet contribution does not automatically translate to access. Only about 15% of landholders globally are women. While many countries formally recognize women’s land rights, social and cultural norms, and sometimes even policies continue to restrict the practical exercise of those rights.

Invisible Work

Clearly, the problem is not women’s capacity to farm, breed, or innovate. For generations, women have proven that they can grow food, breed crops, and select seeds. The challenge lies in policies and structures that limit women’s access to productive resources such as land, credit, training, and agricultural inputs. Without secure land ownership, women farmers face difficulty experimenting with breeding and crop improvement. Without land titles, access to financing becomes more difficult, since land is often required as collateral. Without consistent access to formal training and extension services, agricultural knowledge risks being undervalued or unevenly distributed. The issue, therefore, is not about capacity but about systems.

Women farmers also work within what is often called the “double day.” They are not only farmers; they are also caregivers, household managers, food preparers, and community contributors. When we asked our women partner-farmers in Negros Occidental about the challenges they face in learning plant breeding—aside from age-related difficulties such as declining eyesight—one recurring answer was the challenge of maintaining and caring for the plants they are breeding while also taking care of their children and ensuring that food is served on the table. According to them, field observation, community meetings, and seed selection are often interrupted by cooking meals, caring for children and elders, and attending to other household responsibilities.

These realities create invisible burdens that are rarely discussed in agricultural development. Historically, agricultural systems have treated farming as a masculine domain, to the point that women are often considered supporters or assistants to their husbands rather than farmers in their own right. But women are not merely assistants in agriculture. They are knowledge holders and innovators in their own fields.

Beyond Participation

The question of participation goes deeper than attendance in meetings. Often, women are invited so their presence can be counted. But true empowerment is about decision-making power. Who decides which crop varieties are prioritized? Who determines budget allocation? Who signs project documents? Who speaks during agricultural assemblies? Women farmers may participate in meetings, but they are not always given the space to articulate their priorities.

This is why farmer identity is central to advocacy. Farmers are breeders. Women are farmers. Therefore, women are also breeders in agricultural innovation. This perspective is central to the work of SEARICE, where farmers are recognized as partners in knowledge production, biodiversity conservation, and community-based agricultural development. When women farmers talk about the varieties they want to develop, their preferences reflect everyday realities rather than purely commercial considerations. Many prioritize cooking quality, taste, nutritional value, milling performance, and storage stability. Some emphasize pest resistance, particularly resistance that protects stored grains within households. Climate resilience is another major priority. Varieties that mature faster help farmers manage risks associated with unpredictable weather patterns.

These priorities sometimes differ from conventional breeding programs that focus primarily on yield or market competitiveness. This difference matters. Agriculture is not only about production volume; it is about how food serves families, communities, and local economies. When women are excluded from breeding decisions, crop varieties may fail to reflect household nutrition needs, food preparation practices, and community resilience requirements.

Agriculture is not only about production volume; it is about how food serves families, communities, and local economies.

Innovation begins in farmers’ fields—in observation, selection, seed saving, and adaptation across seasons. Women farmers are already practicing in-situ conservation, maintaining and improving plant diversity directly within their fields. Their work complements institutional conservation efforts such as gene banking, while keeping biodiversity dynamic and socially embedded.

We at SEARICE believe that for farmer-led innovation to thrive, women breeders must have rights to seeds. This includes the right to save, use, share, exchange, sell, and further develop seeds. Without seed rights, innovation becomes restricted, and farmers remain dependent on external supply systems.

Structural Barriers

The challenges women farmers face are not simply technical. They are structural. Time poverty remains a persistent issue because unpaid care work continues to fall disproportionately on women. Social norms sometimes discourage women from speaking in technical or decision-making spaces. In some cases, participation in agricultural programs becomes tokenistic rather than transformative.

It is important not to frame women farmers as victims of agricultural systems. Instead, they should be recognized as constrained innovators working within unequal structural conditions.

Supporting women farmers is also a matter of food security and climate resilience. Evidence suggests that if women farmers had the same access to productive resources as men, global hunger could be significantly reduced. IFAD estimates indicate that improving women’s access to resources could help lift 100 to 150 million people out of hunger. In the context of climate change, supporting women farmers strengthens local adaptation strategies. Diverse seed systems help communities respond to environmental uncertainty. Community-based breeding contributes to agricultural resilience by maintaining genetic diversity that can survive changing conditions.

It is important not to frame women farmers as victims of agricultural systems. Instead, they should be recognized as constrained innovators working within unequal structural conditions.

Women. Seeds. Sovereignty.

Women’s Month is not only a season of recognition. It is also a moment for accountability. It is not enough to offer symbolic gestures such as flowers or slogans. The deeper questions must be asked: Who controls land? Who controls seeds? Who controls agricultural decisions?

“Ang kaya ng lalaki, kaya rin ng babae.” But women should not have to prove this statement repeatedly. Equality should not be framed as competition. What women farmers need is not permission to be capable; they already are. What they need is access—access to land, knowledge, resources, decision-making spaces, and seeds that they can save, share, and develop.

Empowering women farmers means strengthening farmer-led innovation, protecting farmers’ rights, and supporting community-based breeding systems. When women farmers thrive, biodiversity thrives. And when biodiversity thrives, communities become more resilient in the face of environmental and social change.

Agriculture will be stronger when women are recognized not only as participants, but as leaders in innovation, conservation, and food system transformation. The future of food security will not be secured by excluding half of its innovators. It will be secured when women farmers are fully recognized as leaders of change.

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This article is part of the project “Engendering Access of Smallholder Farmers to Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture for Conservation and Sustainable Use,” funded by the Benefit-Sharing Fund of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Through this initiative, efforts are being made to strengthen women’s access to seeds, knowledge, and decision-making spaces—affirming that women farmers are not merely participants in agriculture, but innovators, breeders, and leaders whose rights and contributions must be fully recognized.