This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Public and private investments must address the financial barriers preventing women from benefiting fully from digital technologies and artificial intelligence as multiple global crises and aid cuts bite. That's the view of Shobha Shetty, a senior agricultural adviser to the World Bank and head of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), a World Bank-hosted multilateral finance platform that supports agriculture, food security and climate-resilient development in low-income countries.
Shetty warns that too often women are treated as numbers when it comes to digital access. Women risk being left behind in the "polycrisis" of climate change and mounting food insecurity without deliberate action to increase their rights to land and water, and their inclusion in digital innovation, according to a report published on Thursday (Oct. 15) by the global agricultural research network CGIAR. Rising fertilizer prices caused by conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, plus a severe El Niño weather event this year, are also increasing pressures on smallholders, particularly women, said Shetty in an interview with SciDev.Net.
"These are confounded crises and it is smallholder farmers globally that really suffer the most," she said, highlighting a World Food Program report that found that 645 million people—about 7.8% of the world's population—are facing food and nutrition insecurity. For Shetty, increasing the number of women using digital agricultural tools, such as AI-powered climate and pest advisories, is only part of the challenge. Equally important, she says, is ensuring women can afford these technologies, influence their design and benefit from the value they generate.
Speaking ahead of an event held Thursday (Oct. 15) at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) headquarters in Rome on the sidelines of the World Food Forum, Shetty said investment in digital agriculture must go beyond counting beneficiaries. "We need to look at what we have to do to ensure that investments in digital agriculture really benefit more women, rather than just talking about how many women we reached," she said.
Women in low- and middle-income countries make up 38% of the global agricultural labor force and 41% of the off-farm agrifood workforce, according to the CGIAR report. But many still face systemic barriers that limit their productivity, earnings, decision-making power, food security and climate resilience, it warns. The report, titled "Advancing equality, transforming futures: a path to resilient and productive food, land and water systems in 2050," says solutions must be co-designed with women and financed in a way that reflects their realities.
Shetty cites an experiment supported by the World Bank's Africa Gender Innovation Lab in Ethiopia where women entrepreneurs were assessed for loans and given a credit score using psychometric testing. This was instead of loans based on financial collateral—assets available to secure a loan—which women in poorer countries often lack. "Over three years, 89% of women offered the product borrowed formally, compared with 42% in a comparison group," said Shetty.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
