A/HRC/22/72 facilitates their direct access to financial resources and enhances the visibility of their specific needs as financial actors. This also contributes to the financial security of women, creates further ties within the household, and reduces the rates of divorce and abandonment of women;120 (f) Economic policies that ensure decent work and employment for rural women, including temporary and seasonal workers, in both formal and informal economy. These policies should provide decent wages, food and nutrition security, improved living conditions, social protection, collective bargaining, and freedom of association. Nonagriculture employment opportunities should be developed in the rural infrastructure, health, education, and finance sectors as well as in insurance services, rural industry or shops.121 These should be complemented by social protection mechanisms, including childcare facilities, health insurance and pensions in order to alleviate women’s household work and allow them to take up employment;122 (g) Targeted educational programs and information campaigns on nutrition, family planning, financial services and policies aimed at ensuring women’s representation, participation in decision-making and association in agricultural cooperatives. Access to and information concerning fertilizers, pesticides, seeds, vaccination for the livestock, storage facilities and technology which is appropriate to the needs and activities performed by women, but also to the requirements of their physical capacity and use needs to be provided to rural women;123 (h) The promotion of technologies designed to meet women’s needs, which can increase productivity and shorten physically demanding labour, therefore helping relieve women in their heavy burdens.124 Policy makers need to acknowledge that rural women’s knowledge, needs, interests and constraints in developing crop varieties, or breeding livestock differ from those of men. Alternative sources of cooking fuels shorten preparation, increase storage time of foods and decrease the need for daily firewood collection. Reducing the use of cook stoves alimented by firewood is an important aspect for the improvement of women’s health condition;125 (i) Monitoring and evaluation. Data needs to be collected regarding the distribution of resources within the household taking into account its decision-making structure and composition. V. Good practices Legislation 77. Rwanda reformed its legislation concerning inheritance and land tenure with pronounced protection for gender equality. The enactment of these new legislative acts was supported by the participation of women in local government following the constitutional provision that at least 30 per cent of all decision-making representatives must be women. 126 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 20 Ibid., para 32. UN-Women, note 25 above, p. 12. Submission by Colombia. Submission by IOM. T. Paris et al, “Assessing the impact of participatory research in rice breeding on women farmers”, 44 Experimental Agriculture 1, 2008, 92–112; T. Paris and T.T. Chi, “The Impact of row seeder technology on women labor”, 9 Gender, Technology and Development 2, 2005, 158–183. UN-Women, “Green cook stoves improving women’s lives in Ghana”, 25 April 2012. Ibid., p. 17.