Women Farmers: First Defenders of a Warming Southeast Asia

From the rice plains of Luzon, Philippines to the uplands of Java, Indonesia, women farmers are Southeast Asia’s front-line defenders against climate disruption. They transplant seedlings in flood‑prone paddies, manage water, shift planting calendars when rains come late and stretch harvests to keep their households fed when prices spike.

Strengthening the agency of the region’s women farmers is central to whether Southeast Asia can keep feeding itself in a harsher climate. A 2021 ASEAN Secretariat and OECD report finds that ASEAN women farmers still face social and economic barriers. This year, the UN International Year of the Woman Farmer (IYWF), is a chance to highlight these climate defenders who face systemic disadvantage.

Across ASEAN, women are a major (and often undercounted) part of the agricultural workforce. Women in farming are frequently paid less than men and are a minority among documented landowners (Figure 1). Furthermore, women in agriculture, forestry and fisheries receive about 7 per cent of agricultural investment and credit.

*Notes: Based on the most recent data in databases, which is from 2023 for Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam; 2022 for Lao, Philippines and Timor-Leste; 2020 for Cambodia and Myanmar; and 2000 for Malaysia.

Yet women farmers are “central to food security, nutrition and economic resilience”. Women invest several times more of their earnings than men do in their family’s health, education, nutrition and well-being. Women farmers are often custodians of agrobiodiversity, which is key for climate adaptation and nutrition. Thus, ensuring that they thrive is crucial for resilience and societal development. 

On a positive note, women farmers in Southeast Asia generally have greater agency compared to those in other developing regions and often have a greater say in household budgets and day-to-day spending. In Thailand, the Philippines and Cambodia, they may have visible administrative roles in farmer groups and village organisations. Women provide much of the labour for post‑harvest processing and value addition, including tasks like sorting and grading coffee beans.

Overall, however, the level of women farmers’ recognition and influence in the wider opportunity structure, such as community decisions, farm advisory services, and markets, remains low. Where irrigation schedules, variety choices or pest‑management strategies are set at male-dominated community meetings, as in parts of Indonesia and Myanmar, women’s practical knowledge often goes unregistered.

This translates to missed productivity among women farmers. In a 2023 report, FAO estimated a 24 per cent yield gap between female‑ and male‑managed farms of the same size, globally. As climate impacts grow, women are generally hit harder. When cyclones tear through rice fields or floods depress yields, women bear the brunt of replanting damaged fields, managing food stocks and caring for family members who are ill.

… the region can emerge with food systems that are fairer and more resilient.

If women farmers were provided with the same access to productive resources, such as land, credit, social protection programmes and pragmatic technology, as men, they could increase farm yields by 20-30 per cent, potentially reducing world hunger by up to 17 per cent, according to the FAO in 2011.

Special efforts are needed for greater inclusion of women farmers. Globally, they receive only around five per cent of agricultural advisory services and only about 15 per cent of advisory agents are women, leaving most of them with limited access to tailored advice, crop insurance, appropriate climate-smart technologies or recovery packages. 

A climate‑stressed food system that leans heavily on women’s underpaid work, while excluding them from decisions and resources, is not resilient but brittle. The IYWF gives Southeast Asia a chance to stop treating this brittleness as inevitable and to tackle these barriers head-on.

Three fronts stand out: land and law, finance and services, and voice.

Governments hold the reins on land, law and public investment. They should expand joint titling of agricultural land to include wives’ names on leases and mortgages, remove barriers that prevent women from inheriting or registering land, and integrate gender targets into land, irrigation and climate‑smart agriculture programmes. Ministries of finance and agriculture can ring‑fence budgets for women‑led farms and cooperatives and require all major schemes, from subsidies to disaster recovery funds, to report who benefits, by gender instead of by household. At the local level, governments can ensure that women farmers hold meaningful seats on decision committees.

The private sector, meaning banks and input dealers, can also move the needle. Contract farming schemes should include wives’ names, and design procurement and payment schedules around the crops and tasks that women manage. Financial institutions can develop collateral‑light products tailored to women’s realities, such as providing small, seasonally timed loans with group guarantees and flexible documentation, so that their operations can be more efficient. Food companies and retailers can commit to sourcing from women‑led producer groups, offering price incentives and technical support. Private companies that align with ASEAN’s responsible agricultural investment guidelines and treat women’s inclusion as a core performance metric will build more reliable, climate‑resilient supply chains.

The civil sector, namely farmer organisations, civil society, researchers and consumers, also has a crucial role. Farmer cooperatives can follow the region’s established women‑led groups by creating spaces where women farmers set agendas, manage budgets and negotiate with buyers and government agencies. NGOs and research institutes can co‑design climate‑resilient practices with women farmers, ensuring that innovations reduce drudgery and fit within women’s financial, time and mobility constraints. Consumers can support produce from fair, gender‑responsive value chains.

Southeast Asia should use this IYWF to develop deadlines for concrete shifts in terms of whose names land is registered, and who signs contracts, receives credit and training, and sits in the room when climate‑risk maps are drawn. If it does so, the region can emerge with food systems that are fairer and more resilient. Then women farmers will not just be the first defenders of a warming Southeast Asia, but among the reasons those systems continue to stand.

The author would like to thank Irish Baguilat of the Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development for support and input in the writing of this piece.

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