Rural women play a vital role in farm families, businesses and as entrepreneurs.
Whilst the Rural Development Programme for NI provides a strong platform for women’s needs to be articulated, women continue to be an underrepresented group across Programmes to date. The new 2014-2020 Programme needs to be made accessible to rural women.
The Rural Development Programme has the potential to be transformative for rural women by engaging them in decision making; supporting entrepreneurship; improving villages and developing rural tourism, but rural women must be recognised as a target group and actively sought to engage in the Programme.
We call on the Managing Authority to:
- Develop a communication strategy that delivers communication of the Programme effectively to rural women specifically
- Consider the particular needs of rural women at each development stage of the Programme
- Ensure that the LAGs have a 50:50 gender balance over the course of the Programme
- Look at innovative approaches of collecting gender disaggregated data on Programme beneficiaries
We call on the Government Departments to:
- Work with the Managing Authority to look at ways of collaborating and maximising the delivery of the Programme e.g. DETI to increase female entrepreneurship
