ABSTRACT
In 1984, the National Council on Political Economy approved the first explicit policy toward rural women in the history of Colombian agrarian policy. During the 1950s, Colombian industrialization was guided by a policy of import substitution. The agricultural sector, however—the latifundiaminifundia system that had developed with high indices of property concentration—was marked by unequal distribution of wealth and income and was locked into a land tenancy structure that was unable to support the rapid development of commercial agriculture. The Integrated Rural Development program was designed as a government-sponsored alternative to the agrarian reform, which had all but halted. The activities of INCORA, the institute charged with its implementation, had been drastically cut back, and national discussion of the reform had receded. Two factors can account for this acknowledgment—the growing body of research on Colombian rural women and the international focus on women as food producers.
