Empowering Rural Women for Pakistan's Agriculture

In the sun-scorched fields of Sindh and the terraced farms of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a critical workforce toils in near-total invisibility. Rural women, whose hands are worn from years of sowing, weeding, harvesting, and tending livestock, form the unacknowledged backbone of Pakistan’s agrarian economy. Their labor sustains the soil, preserves indigenous farming knowledge, maintains household nutrition, and keeps the rural economy functioning, yet their contributions remain systematically unrecorded, undervalued, and underpaid. Despite working longer hours than many men in agricultural households, much of their work is categorized as “family help,” rendering it invisible in official statistics and in policy formulations that shape agricultural development.

Agriculture is the lifeline of Pakistan’s economy, employing 37.4% of the national labor force and contributing 22.9% to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (Pakistan Economic Survey, 2023–24). However, this vital sector is under unprecedented pressure. Climate change is intensifying heatwaves, disrupting rainfall patterns, and accelerating the spread of pests and diseases. Simultaneously, Pakistan faces acute water scarcity, land fragmentation, and progressive soil degradation, all of which threaten agricultural productivity and rural livelihoods. In such a fragile landscape, the country’s pathway toward food security, climate resilience, and sustainable development hinges on transforming its agricultural practices.

This transformation is impossible without empowering rural women. Women already play a central role in seed preservation, crop diversification, small-scale irrigation, and household-level climate adaptation, yet they often lack access to land ownership, agricultural credit, digital tools, extension services, and formal training. Strengthening their skills, decision-making power, and economic autonomy would not only improve household well-being but also enhance farm productivity and ecological stewardship. Recognizing and investing in the rural women of Pakistan is therefore not just a matter of gender justice, it is a strategic imperative for the country’s agricultural sustainability and long-term economic stability.

The Invisible Pillars of Agriculture

Rural women constitute a staggering 50–60% of Pakistan’s agricultural labor force (World Bank, 2021), yet their contributions remain largely unseen within formal economic systems. Their involvement spans the entire agricultural value chain, beginning with seed selection and soil preparation and extending through planting, weeding, irrigation, harvesting, post-harvest processing, fodder cutting, livestock care, and water collection. Beyond these tasks, women manage household nutrition, preserve indigenous seed varieties, and often serve as custodians of community-level ecological knowledge. Despite this immense burden of labor, only 4.5% of women in Pakistan legally own the land they cultivate (Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, 2023). This stark gap between contribution and ownership reflects not only gender inequality but also a profound economic inefficiency and environmental oversight.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has long emphasized that closing the gender gap in access to resources such as land, credit, extension services, and technology could increase agricultural yields by 20–30% (FAO, 2011). Such improvement could significantly reshape Pakistan’s food security landscape at a time when climate change, water scarcity, and soil degradation threaten agricultural productivity. Rural women’s unpaid and often unrecognized labor contributes an estimated PKR 680 billion (about USD 2.4 billion) annually to the rural economy (Pakistan Gender Gap Report, 2024), making them indispensable economic actors even though their work rarely appears in policy documents or national accounts.

Furthermore, research shows that when women control household income, they reinvest up to 90% of it into their children’s health, nutrition, and education (UN Women, 2022). This creates a transformative multiplier effect that strengthens community resilience, reduces intergenerational poverty, and enhances human development indicators. Empowering rural women is therefore not merely a moral imperative but a strategic pathway to building a more food-secure, equitable, and economically robust Pakistan.

Systemic Barriers and the Climate Change Nexus

The immense potential of rural women in Pakistan is constrained by a deeply rooted system of patriarchal norms, restrictive legal frameworks, and structural neglect within agricultural institutions. Although women perform a majority of on-farm and off-farm labor, they are seldom recognized as farmers. Instead, they are labeled as “helpers,” a classification that not only erases their contributions but also excludes them from critical decision-making roles. As a result, rural women face substantial barriers in accessing land titles, agricultural credit, modern farming tools, and government subsidies that are routinely available to men. This marginalization is reinforced by the alarmingly low literacy rate among rural women, below 45% (UNESCO, 2023), which limits their ability to navigate bureaucratic systems or pursue agricultural entrepreneurship. Compounding the issue is the gender imbalance in extension services: less than 10% of agricultural extension beneficiaries are women (Asian Development Bank, 2022), leaving millions of female farmers without technical guidance or climate-smart training.

The vulnerabilities created by these systemic inequalities are further intensified by climate change. Because rural women are primarily responsible for managing natural resources, collecting water, preparing fodder, saving seeds, and ensuring family nutrition, they are on the front lines of environmental stress. When climate shocks occur, women’s workloads expand dramatically as they struggle to secure dwindling resources. The catastrophic 2022 floods, which submerged one-third of Pakistan, devastated rural livelihoods and affected women disproportionately. Many lost livestock, standing crops, stored food grains, and tools essential for home-based food processing. Additionally, displacement increased their caregiving burdens and exposed them to heightened health and safety risks (UNDP, 2023). Thus, climate change not only threatens agricultural productivity but also deepens existing gender disparities, making the empowerment of rural women a central requirement for building climate resilience in Pakistan.

A Blueprint for an Inclusive and Sustainable Future

Creating an agricultural system that truly recognizes and uplifts the role of rural women demands a holistic and forward-looking strategy, one that simultaneously strengthens legal rights, expands technological access, and reforms institutional structures. Legal and economic empowerment form the foundation of this transformation. Provinces must move beyond policy statements and fully implement joint land titling programs so that women gain secure ownership and decision-making power over the land they cultivate. Simplifying inheritance procedures through women-focused facilitation desks would remove major bureaucratic hurdles. Equally important is the introduction of a national “Women for Green Growth” credit line, enabling women farmers to access low-interest loans for climate-smart technologies such as solar-powered irrigation systems, composting units, and small-scale biogas plants. Such tools can reduce labor burdens while enhancing environmental sustainability.

Knowledge and technology transfer is another pillar of inclusive development. Agricultural extension must be redesigned to reach women where they are, not where institutions assume them to be. Setting a national target such as ensuring that at least 40% of extension officers are women by 2030 would help reshape the system. In an increasingly digital era, access to technology is indispensable. A National Rural Women Agri-App offering climate-resilient farming tutorials, weather alerts, and real-time market prices in local languages could dramatically narrow the information gap.

Strengthening market integration is crucial for translating labor into income. Women-only cooperatives in seed production, dairy processing, and organic food chains would formalize their economic participation, especially if supported through tax incentives and guaranteed market linkages. Institutional reforms must accompany these efforts. Ensuring women’s representation in farmer organizations, irrigation boards, and provincial agriculture departments, through dedicated Gender and Sustainability Cells, would embed their perspectives into decision-making structures long dominated by men. Finally, data-driven accountability remains essential. A “Gender in Agriculture Index,” developed by the Ministry of National Food Security & Research, would track provincial performance and guide evidence-based reforms. Together, these measures offer a transformative roadmap for a more equitable and sustainable agricultural future.

Conclusion

Pakistan’s agricultural future depends on recognizing, valuing, and empowering the rural women who form its most resilient yet overlooked workforce. As climate change intensifies and traditional farming systems confront unprecedented ecological stress, rural women continue to hold communities together through their labor, indigenous knowledge, and adaptive strategies. However, their contributions remain constrained by systemic barrier-limited land rights, restricted access to finance, inadequate extension services, and exclusion from institutional decision-making. These gendered inequalities not only diminish women’s economic potential but also weaken national efforts to achieve food security, climate resilience, and sustainable rural development.

Empowering women is therefore not an optional social agenda; it is a strategic necessity. Policies that secure land rights, expand credit access, and promote climate-smart technologies can dramatically increase agricultural productivity. Investments in digital literacy, women-centered extension services, and inclusive market structures can unlock new economic opportunities while strengthening household resilience. Equally important is institutional reform that ensures women’s representation in agricultural governance, enabling them to shape policies affecting their livelihoods.

By placing women at the center of agricultural transformation, through legal, technological, and structural reforms, Pakistan can cultivate a more equitable, prosperous, and climate-resilient rural economy. The path to sustainable agriculture is undeniably a path led by empowered women.

References: ADB; FAO; Pakistan Bureau of Statistics; Government of Pakistan; Pakistan Gender Gap Report; UNDP; UNESCO; UN Women; World Bank.

Please note that the views expressed in this article are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of any organization.

The writer is a former Pakistan Ambassador and Permanent Representative to FAO, WFP, & IFAD and can be reached at nriyaz60@gmail.com

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