A/RES/68/139 Improvement of the situation of women in rural areas or abuses of their rights, including domestic violence, sexual violence and all other forms of gender-based violence; (k) Ensuring that the rights of older women in rural areas are taken into account with regard to their equal access to basic social services, appropriate social protection/social security measures, equal access to and control of economic resources and their empowerment through access to financial and infr astructure services, with special focus on the provision of support to older women, including indigenous women, who often have access to few resources and are more vulnerable; (l) Valuing and supporting the critical role and contribution of rural women, including indigenous women in rural areas, in the conservation and sustainable use of traditional crops and biodiversity for present and future generations as an essential contribution to food and nutrition security; (m) Promoting the rights of women and girls with disabilities in rural areas, including by ensuring access on an equal basis to productive employment and decent work, economic and financial resources and disability-sensitive infrastructure and services, in particular in relation to health and e ducation, as well as by ensuring that their priorities and needs are fully incorporated into policies and programmes, inter alia, through their participation in decision -making processes; (n) Developing specific assistance programmes and advisory services to promote economic skills of rural women in banking, modern trading and financial procedures and providing microcredit and other financial and business services to a greater number of women in rural areas, in particular female heads of households, for their economic empowerment; (o) Supporting women entrepreneurs and women smallholder farmers, including those in subsistence farming, by facilitating their access to extension and financial services, agricultural inputs and land, water sanitation and irrigation, markets and innovative technologies; (p) Mobilizing resources, including at the national level and through official development assistance, for increasing women’s access to existing savings and credit schemes, as well as targeted programmes that pro vide women with capital, knowledge and tools that enhance their economic capacities; (q) Ensuring and improving equal access for rural women to employment in agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, supporting and promoting opportunities in small enterprises, sustainable social enterprises and cooperatives and improving working conditions; (r) Investing in infrastructure and in time- and labour-saving technologies, especially in rural areas, benefiting women and girls by reducing their burden of domestic activities, affording the opportunity for girls to attend school and for women to engage in self-employment or to participate in the labour market; (s) Taking steps to ensure that women’s unpaid work and contributions to on-farm and off-farm production, including income generated in the informal sector, are recognized, supporting remunerative non-agricultural employment of rural women, improving working conditions, increasing access to productive resources and recognizing that women’s full integration into the formal economy is essential in order to address the structural and underlying causes of the difficult conditions of rural women; 4/6

Select target paragraph3