UPL Insights: UPL Women’s Network

Women are the backbone of agriculture, with studies suggesting that they account for nearly half of the world’s smallholder farmers and produce up to 70% of Africa’s food. They are largely responsible for agricultural activities such as growing household crops and vegetables, preserving harvests, and raising sheep and goats. Yet despite their contribution to the sector, women face a number of challenges and barriers, unable to access the land, loans, inputs, and machinery that men do, whilst also carrying the ‘double burden’ of paid work and unpaid care work looking after their families. In this episode of our UPL Insights series, Florent Clair speaks with Francesca Distefano, Gender and Policy Expert at the FAO (United Nations), and Paula Pinto, Global Head of Business & Marketing Excellence at UPL and Global leader of the UPL women’s network, about deconstructing the stereotypes around women in farming; how public and private actors can work together to improve the support for women; and the launch of the UPL Women’s Network. To learn more about the FAO’s work with women in agriculture, visit: To learn more about UPL, visit:

You can listen to UPL Insights: UPL Women’s Network online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

UPL Insights: UPL Women’s Network is an episode from UPL Global by UPL OpenAg™.

This episode is 37:14 long.

This episode was published on Oct 6, 2021.

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