CEDAW/C/GC/34 insurance and domestic payment services, on the basis of equality with rural men, and promote their economic, financial and business skills. States parties should ensure that rural women have equal access to: (a) Community-managed and mobile financial services, which should address rural women’s needs, for example by lending to women who may lack collaterals, employ simplified, low-cost banking practices and facilitate rural women’s access to formal financial service providers; (b) Information on financial services and facilities; (c) Financial skills-building programmes using innovative methods that take into account concerns of illiteracy. 69. States parties should ensure that financial services, including credit and loans, include gender-responsive mechanisms and are not withheld from rural women because they lack a male guarantor. Registration procedures should be adapted to the time and mobility challenges faced by many rural women. Agricultural credit and loans should allow for the untenured nature of the smallholdings held by many women farmers, so that rural women who may lack formal tenure rights are still able to gain access to them. 5. Markets and marketing facilities 70. For rural women farmers and producers to sell their goods and produce successfully, they must have access to markets and marketing facilities and develop effective marketing skills. However, public and private discrimination, as well as limitations on mobility and time, may serve to exclude rural women from the use of marketing facilities and supply chains. Rural women also tend to be underrepresented on market committees and often have little input into the design, creation, use and upgrading of local marketing facilities. 71. States parties should ensure that rural women have access to markets and marketing facilities and that, as farmers and producers, they are explicitly consulted on their problems regarding access to and the effective use of markets, so that marketing facilities may better address their needs. States parties should also seek to improve their marketing skills and their skills to add value to their products, including through targeted outreach activities. 72. States should also develop specific support and agricultural extension programmes and advisory services to promote the economic and entrepreneurial skills of rural women and to improve their capacity to gain access to markets and value chains. 6. Technology 73. Reducing rural women’s labour time and effort through infrastructure and technological innovation is particularly vital. In this regard, they are in need of agricultural, irrigation and water-harvesting technology and labour-saving agricultural equipment. Furthermore, the access of rural women to information and communications technology (ICT) and mobile networks is as important as improving their marketing and other skills. 74. States parties should ensure that labour-saving and environmentally sound technology, including agricultural, irrigation and water-harvesting 20/25 16-03601