As the Food and Agriculture Organization's framework for implementing the Platform for Action adopted at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women (September 1995), this paper details a strategy for achieving a number of objectives specifically relating to rural women. These include: promoting gender-based equity in the access to, and control of, productive resources; enhancing women's participation in decision and policy- making processes at all levels; and, promoting actions to reduce rural women's workload and enhance their opportunities for remunerated employment and income. Activities are concentrated in four main areas concerning the following: data and information on the gender dimension of agriculture and rural development; methodologies, tools and training activities to integrate a gender perspective into agricultural and rural development approaches; capacity-building amongst rural women; and supporting the formulation and application of gender-responsive agricultural and rural development policy. Programmes of Action for each of the FAO's departments and technical divisions are summarised.