In this study, which involved 105 women in six provinces, I mentioned that only 6.7% of those women participated in the APF consultations. Why didn't they participate? Many of the farm organizations are still male-dominated, so when a farm organization gets an invitation to attend, the invitations are circulated among the male leadership of that male-dominated organization. The other issue is that politicians and bureaucrats don't make an effort to invite women specifically to those meetings. The timing of the meetings is problematic, given that many of the rural farm women have children. There's no day care provided at the APF consultations that I'm aware of. It's impossible for women to leave the farm for that day, or sometimes day and a half, depending on the amount of travel that's involved, to attend a policy forum aimed at resolving the problem.
On February 22nd, 2007. See this statement in context.