This Brief, produced on the occasion of the launch of the FAOSTAT Suite of Gender Indicators domain in June 2026, presents updated sex-disaggregated data across agrifood systems, organised around five themes: economic participation, education, agency/institutions, assets, and food security. Findings include:

- Women account for 42 percent of the global agrifood systems workforce (1.39 billion people), a share that has remained virtually unchanged since 2000.

- Women are more concentrated in agrifood systems than men in Africa and Asia, reflecting more limited employment opportunities outside the sector.

- Informality remains pervasive: in over half of countries, more than 90 percent of agrifood systems employment is informal, and women are consistently more likely than men to work in informal jobs.

- Wage gaps between men and women in agriculture do not follow a single pattern: women earn less than men in around 60 percent of countries, but parity or even higher earnings for women are observed in parts of Europe, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa.

- Women shoulder a disproportionate burden of unpaid care work: gaps between men and women range between 2 and 21 percentage points.

- Women education attainments improved but gaps persist where they matter most: literacy rates are lower in rural areas for both sexes, with the largest gaps between males and females concentrated in low-literacy countries.

- Inequalities between men and women in land rights remain widespread: in most countries, women are less likely than men to have secure land tenure, and strong legal protections are still uncommon.

- Women face consistently higher food insecurity, and gaps between men and women widened during the COVID-19 period, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean.