Gender balance in the organic sector in Ukraine is better than in the overall agricultural sector. This conclusion is based on the results of the Gender profile study of the Ukrainian organic sector, which was conducted by Organic Initiative Public Association and presented at BIOFACH 2024.
The study was conducted with the aim to identify the roles of women and men in the organic sector, to study the changes taking place, in particular in connection with the full-scale war, as well as the challenges for the sector and possible ways to overcome them.
There are gender inequality, stereotypes and prejudices in the organic sector in Ukraine, as well as in agricultural sector in general. In particular, there are widespread stereotypes among sector representatives of both genders about the division of positions and responsibilities into “women’s” and “men’s” ones. At the same time, the situation in organic agriculture seems to be better compared to conventional.
According to statistics, at the beginning of 2021, women managed 20.8% of farms in Ukraine. And according to a recent study, about 27% of organic farm are managed by women.
A common serious wartime challenge for businesses is the shortage of male labour. 76% of respondents voiced this problem and mostly attributed it to men joining the army and other restrictions caused by martial law. And 62% of respondents also noted a shortage of technical specialists. In today’s realities, women have to take over traditionally male activities, but this requires automation of production processes to replace hard physical labour.
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The study was conducted in December 2023 – January 2024 by Organic Initiative Public Association (Ukraine) in partnership with research agency MZ HUB under the auspices of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine and with the support of Switzerland within the framework of the Swiss-Ukrainian program “Higher Value Added Trade from the Organic and Dairy Sector of Ukraine” (QFTP), implemented by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL, Switzerland) in partnership with SAFOSO AG (Switzerland).