Oxfam urges you to support women cocoa farmers to celebrate International Women's Day.
Chocolate is a $100 billion industry – but most cocoa farmers live on less than $2 a day. And the women working on cocoa farms have it the hardest.
Women on cocoa farms get less training than men – and they get paid less (if they get paid at all!). Compared to men, women cocoa farmers struggle to get loans and rarely get to own the land they farm, even if they work the same plot their entire lives.
That's where you come in. The big chocolate companies employ millions of people in poor countries – and consumers like you and me have a powerful influence on their behavior.
Today, we're honoring women like Olga Adou, a cocoa farmer in Côte d’Ivoire who is beating the odds.
Olga understands the struggles women cocoa farmers face. She started a cocoa cooperative to support fellow farmers – helping them get training to improve their skills, access tools like fertilizers to strengthen their cocoa crop, and more. Olga is doing her part to change the way women cocoa farmers are treated – and she wants the big chocolate companies to start doing theirs.
Mars, Mondelez and Nestlé are the big companies that make Oreos, M&M's and Crunch. They can change their policies to help ensure that women cocoa farmers like Olga are treated equally – but they need to hear from consumers like you.