Rural Women’s Empowerment in Nonfarm Employment Issues for ICT Initiatives and Territorial Policies in Latin America

In the mind of the general public, the rural sector is equal to agriculture and for a great majority of policymakers, rural development continues to mean agricultural development. Not surprisingly, it is a sector traditionally covered at the governmental level by the ministries of agriculture, and at the international development level by agencies with an agricultural development mandate such as the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) and in the Americas, the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture (IICA). In turn, the national ministries of agriculture are the natural counterparts to these international agencies. Moreover, most rural development projects financed by international financial institutions (World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, African Development