Women in Pacific Island countries play an important role in
agricultural and natural resource management and in
contributing to food and livelihood security. Yet, programmes and
policies related to agriculture, fisheries, forestry, natural resource
management and rural enterprises do not always take women's
roles sufficiently into account given the scarcity of relevant
gender-differentiated and sex-segregated information. In order to
better address food security issues, it is therefore necessary to
understand the status of women as compared to men and to
strengthen women's roles in agriculture and natural resource
management. This requires the availability of relevant
information.
This report examines existing policies in the areas of agriculture,
natural resource management, fisheries, forestry and rural
enterprises in three Pacific Island countries, namely Fiji, Vanuatu
and Samoa. The focus is on their relevance to women and their
impact on food and livelihood security as a means to analyse the
current status of gender integration in these policies. On the
basis of this review and analysis of existing policies, the report
identifies relevant sex-disaggregated data needs at both the
national and community level, as well as appropriate sources
and data availability. Strategies for capacity building in the
identification, collection and tabulation of sex-disaggregated data
are subsequently discussed as a means of enhancing database
development in agriculture, natural resource management and
rural enterprise development.