Gender Inequality in Nepalese Agriculture: Issues Concerning Sustainability and Food Security

Despite of the advancement in technology and excessive use of chemical fertilizers for agricultural production, about 870 million people around the globe are hunger stricken due to various resource scarcities. There is a need to boost the agricultural productivity in order to feed the population which is growing in sky rocketing way. Food insecurity is a burning problem affecting nutrition, health and the betterment of population across the globe. Basically, food security depends on four pillars: availability, access, utilization and stability. Sustainable approaches in agricultural sector are of great importance to improve the food productivity and security along with mitigating nutrition problem around the world. In industrialized countries, less developed and developing countries, gaps in earnings by gender have long been evident. For the equivalent kind of work, women wages are found to be 60-75% of men wages. The agricultural sector of Nepal contributes 28 percent to national GDP and this share tends to rise in the future years. At present the productivity of Nepal is sufficient to feed its population but there are a lot of problems related to gender inequality which eventually affects food and nutritional security. Several such aspects are discussed in this paper.