Preliminary Study: Gender, Higher Education and AET

Agriculture education and training (AET) is important to increase human capital in agriculture, promote knowledge, raise agricultural productivity, and realize the potential of women in agriculture. This paper focuses on gender in higher education agricultural training programs. Female farmers play a vital role in agriculture around the world, yet they are poorly represented in agricultural programs in higher education. The objectives of the paper are to review global and regional gender data on AET in higher education, outline the major gender issues in AET, and initiate a discussion of good practices for addressing gender disparities in AET higher education programs. Following this introduction, Section 2 presents the background material and summarizes some of the global issues related to gender, higher education, and AET. Section 3 takes a regional look at these issues. Section 4 presents a case study of AET in three universities in Bangladesh and Cambodia to bring to life the experiences of women in AET programs. The paper concludes with a summary of good practices.