Policy Brief 14 - The gender dimension of farm digitalisation

Despite longstanding EU commitments to gender equality, structural disparities continue to restrict women’s participation and leadership in agriculture and rural development. Digitalisation is increasingly promoted as a catalyst for addressing these inequalities. However, there is a limited holistic understanding of the conditions under which digital innovations can foster inclusive and sustainable outcomes. A key barrier is the absence of integrative frameworks that can systematically categorise the multifaceted evidence emerging from digital transitions. This limitation hampers both the comparability of findings and their practical relevance for policymaking. CODECS evaluates how digitalisation intersects with gender inequality in EU agriculture and identifies policy options and recommendations to overcome the digital divide in rural areas, also in relation to gender disparities.