T Sopo, a 31-year-old from Tsalka, is taking her first steps toward building a small cheese business with her mother. She emphasizes the importance of supporting other women farmers, sharing information about projects, training, and exhibitions to help their businesses grow. Alongside her entrepreneurial efforts, Sopo founded the non-profit Tsalka Development Center and runs a small guesthouse, reflecting her active role in the community and her awareness of the barriers women face, particularly the lack of land ownership, which limits their ability to start or grow agricultural activities and access financing.
Despite Georgia’s legal commitment to protecting women’s equal right to land ownership, many women remain unrecognized as farmers and face limited opportunities. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Country Gender Assessment (CGA) of Georgia, updated in 2025, highlights the need for secure access to land and assets, efforts to address discriminatory inheritance practices, and simplified administrative procedures to advance women’s economic empowerment, agency, and recognition in agriculture.
Rural women in Georgia play a vital role in sustaining local food systems and supporting their families, yet their contributions are often undervalued. The CGA notes progress in recent years, including improved sex-disaggregated data collection and initiatives like women-focused Farmer Field Schools and the integration of gender equality into national agricultural, climate, and environmental strategies. However, socioeconomic barriers and discriminatory practices persist.
Georgia’s first-time use survey published in 2022 revealed that 90.3 percent of rural women performed unpaid domestic work, more than twice the rate of men. Rural women spend an average of 3.6 hours per day on household tasks—five times more than men—and mothers spend six times more time on childcare than fathers. These disparities limit opportunities for education, formal employment, leadership, and contribute to a persistent gender pay gap in agriculture. Kyial Arabaeva, FAO Technical Advisor, emphasizes that reducing women’s unpaid care burden is key to empowerment, alongside challenging cultural norms around land inheritance and decision-making and promoting participation in higher levels of agricultural value chains.
Darejan, a 52-year-old woman from the village of Sori, exemplifies these challenges. As a single mother, she balances domestic work with producing and selling vegetables and meat at the municipal market. She values earning her own income as a path to independence and resilience, despite the heavy workload. The CGA underscores that without policies to redistribute unpaid care—through accessible childcare, improved rural infrastructure, and labour-saving technologies—rural women’s empowerment will remain out of reach.
FAO and its partners have supported women like Sopo and Darejan through rural development and entrepreneurship initiatives. Darejan benefited from the Agriculture and Rural Development Project, supported by Austrian Development Cooperation, which provided labour-saving equipment. Sopo has received support through FAO’s matching grants scheme and food safety trainings under the European Neighbourhood Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (ENPARD–4), funded by the European Union and Sweden, allowing her to host extension trainings and strengthen her agricultural activities.
FAO continues to work closely with government ministries and partners to strengthen gender-responsive and inclusive rural development policies in Georgia. While progress has been made in increasing rural and young women’s participation in agriculture, more efforts are needed to recognize women farmers’ contributions and address persistent challenges across agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and related sectors.
As 2026 marks the International Year of the Woman Farmer, the findings of the CGA highlight the growing urgency to empower women and girls. In Georgia, this requires stronger state commitments, support for rural women’s organizations, grassroots initiatives, and expanded access to social protection, skills development, digital tools, and transport, creating more inclusive, resilient, and prosperous communities across the country.
