All publications: rural employment + rural workers

Sustainable Fishing: Decent Working Conditions, Safety and Social Protection

Key issues and policy options to promote productive, decent jobs in the fisheries sector.

Productive and safe work in forestry

Key issues and policy options to promote productive, decent jobs in the forestry sector.

Strengthening rural labour inspection for high-quality and productive jobs

Key issues and policy options to promote labour inspection in agricultural and other rural enterprises.

Empowering rural communities through financial inclusion

Key issues and policy options to promote access to financial services for rural communities.

Cooperatives for People-Centred Rural Development

Key issues and policy options to promote the cooperative business model in rural areas.

Skills for rural development

Key issues and policy options to promote training and skills development in rural areas.

Empowering People with Disabilities for Rural Development

Key issues and policy options to promote access to education, training and employment opportunities for disabled people living in rural areas.

Food Security through Decent Work

Key issues and policy options to promote sustainable food security strategies involving rural areas.

Food, drink and tobacco industry driving rural employment and development

Key issues and policy options to promote productive, decent jobs in the global food production system.

The ILO’s Rural Employment and Decent Work Programme

Rural Policy Briefs: Labour Migration Governance for Rural Development

Migration provides many poor rural households with a livelihood strategy. However, it can also disrupt local employment, undermine family and community cohesion and engender dangerous and exploitative working conditions.

Breaking the rural poverty cycle: Getting girls and boys out of work and into school

Instead of attending school, millions of girls and boys in rural areas worldwide are child labourers. They are everywhere, but often hidden, on farms, on fishing boats, in plantations, in mountain areas, herding livestock or toiling as domestic...

Making migration work for women and men in rural labour markets

Many poor rural households see migration to urban or other rural areas, or abroad, as a strategy to escape poverty or improve the quality of their lives. Migration patterns vary by continent and even countries within continents, and change over...

Women in infrastructure works: Boosting gender equality and rural development!

Gender is an important but largely neglected aspect of infrastructure planning and provision. Rural women pay a particularly high price for the lack of infrastructure, in time spent accessing water for domestic or agricultural uses, processing and...

Agricultural value chain development: Threat or opportunity for women’s employment?

Agricultural markets are rapidly globalizing, generating new consumption patterns and new production and distribution systems. Value chains, often controlled by multinational or national firms and supermarkets, are capturing a growing share of the...

Rural women’s entrepreneurship is “good business”!

Rural women increasingly run their own enterprises, yet their socio-economic contributions and entrepreneurial potential remain largely unrecognized and untapped. They are concentrated in informal, micro-size, low productivity and low-return...

Investing in skills for socio-economic empowerment of rural women

Skills development is key to improving rural productivity, employability and income-earning opportunities, enhancing food security and promoting environmentally sustainable rural development and livelihoods. Despite rural women’s major role in...

Gender-equitable rural work to reduce poverty and boost economic growth

Decent work is central to reducing poverty and achieving equitable, inclusive and sustainable development. Unleashing rural women’s socio-economic potential and fighting rural poverty involves tackling a number of decent work gaps: low productivity...

Gender dimensions of agricultural and rural employment: Differentiated pathways out of poverty

This interagency report on the gender dimension of agricultural work was produced by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Labour Office (ILO) following two...

Women workers in agriculture: Expanding responsibilities and shrinking opportunities

The Study explores policy options for enhancing women's choices in and benefits from work in the agriculture sector by analysing patters in their role, position and problems in this sector.