Rural Women's Empowerment through Education in Southern Nigeria: Implications for Global Food Security

Women empowerment has become a topical issue across the world. However, the trend is often skewed against rural women. Yet, rural women, who are predominantly farmers, bear several burdens both within the fam il y and in the society as a whole. Pat1icularly, as it has become generally accepted that the task of attaining food secUJity rests on the shoulders of rural women. llowever, rural women fa1111ers don 't often have to the agricultural productive input such as land, technologies and credit facilities, they require for the ir farming activities. In addition, they don't have the libet1y to participate in leadership roles and decision making. Social norms bar them from these pri vileges. Data for this paper was obtained from an empirical s tudy conducted in Edo State, Southern Nigeria. A total number of 457 women were involved in the quantitative study. Findings show that only 0.2% has attended any farmers' education program. This paper combines both empirical data and existing g lobal literature to affirm rural women as fam1 managers and argues that since their e fficiency dete1111ines g lobal food security, then the need to educate them cannot be overemphasized. The paper concludes that women should be empowered through fanners' education to be more efficient in their occupation. This action is vital for them to be able to contribute more to global food security