Pathways for women’ empowerment in agriculture in South and Southeast Asia

This Stockholm Environment Institute briefing examines the barriers to gender equality in the agricultural sectors of South and Southeast Asia. It argues that Women's Economic Empowerment (WEE) strategies, which focus on market access and productivity, often fail to achieve true gender equality because they ignore systemic patriarchal norms and power imbalances. The document provides evidence from rice value chains and home gardening projects in Cambodia, Pakistan, and Vietnam to illustrate how women remain marginalized as secondary labor with limited control over resources, and recommends a shift toward transformative approaches that address the root cultural and political causes of inequality.

• Women in South and Southeast Asian agriculture are frequently viewed as secondary labor, with their contributions undervalued compared to men's. In Pakistan's Punjab Province, rice production relies heavily on women's unpaid or low-valued labor for tasks like weeding and seed transplanting, which are avoided by men. In Vietnam, women performing traditionally male tasks, such as land preparation, still face gender wage gaps because higher value is attributed to male effort.
• Legal access to agricultural resources does not guarantee that women have control over their use. In Cambodia, patriarchal norms and high illiteracy rates mean women are often unaware of their joint ownership or inheritance rights to land, leaving men with exclusive control. This power imbalance can lead male household heads to utilize women's cheap labor instead of investing in machinery, which hinders technological progress for the whole household.
• Women's economic roles are largely restricted to the lower, less lucrative stages of agricultural value chains. While women provide over half of Asia's agricultural labor, they are rarely found in high-level roles like rice export management; for example, only two of 200 members of the Cambodian Rice Federation are women. In Vietnam, while women may manage sales, the majority of traders—particularly those in rice trading companies that control prices—are middle-aged men.
• Agricultural policies often ignore gender and power dynamics, primarily benefiting male-dominated downstream actors like processors and traders. In Vietnam, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) omitted gender from its Rural Development Strategy 2010-2020 and delegated gender mainstreaming to the Women's Union, which lacks the authority and resources to influence MARD. Cambodia has a more enabling policy environment via the Ministry of Women's Affairs, but enforcement remains weak due to a lack of accountability and monitoring.
• There is no inherent 'win-win' relationship between economic growth and gender equality; increasing women's participation in value chains does not automatically lead to empowerment. Many projects fail because they treat women as a means to boost productivity without addressing the discriminatory practices and caregiving burdens they face. True empowerment requires building women's ability to understand and challenge the political and cultural structures that marginalize them.
• To achieve an empowering sustainable agricultural sector, the document recommends four strategic shifts: integrating gender and social equality as central project components, facilitating the negotiation of power relations, increasing women's capacity for collective action and leadership, and ensuring gender-responsive policy implementation through the engagement of Women's Ministries and Civil Society Organizations.

APA

Nguyen, H., Mortensen, S., & Pravalprukskul, P. (2019). Pathways for women’ empowerment in agriculture in South and Southeast Asia. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/gender-and-agriculture-in-south-and-southeast-asia-sei-discussion-briefing.pdf

Chicago

Nguyen, Ha, Sofie Mortensen, and Pin Pravalprukskul. Pathways for women’ empowerment in agriculture in South and Southeast Asia. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2019. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/gender-and-agriculture-in-south-and-southeast-asia-sei-discussion-briefing.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Nguyen |first1=Ha |last2=Mortensen |first2=Sofie |last3=Pravalprukskul |first3=Pin |title=Pathways for women’ empowerment in agriculture in South and Southeast Asia |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=January 2019 |url=https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/gender-and-agriculture-in-south-and-southeast-asia-sei-discussion-briefing.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{nguyen2019pathways, author = {Nguyen, Ha and Mortensen, Sofie and Pravalprukskul, Pin}, title = {{Pathways for women’ empowerment in agriculture in South and Southeast Asia}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2019}, month = jan, url = {https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/gender-and-agriculture-in-south-and-southeast-asia-sei-discussion-briefing.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }