JULY 2003

Women and Hunger: The Inextricable Link

On 21 May 2003, Joan Holmes, president of The Hunger Project, testified before the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus. Representative Tom Lantos invited Joan - the only female speaker on the expert panel of six - to address the correlation between women and the end of hunger. The invitation stated: “Hunger is a question of misdistribution and inequity - not lack of food.” Notably, Joan was the only expert who didn’t focus on famine and food aid. Excerpts from her testimony follow.

The greatest violation of human rights in our world is the subjugation of women, and the persistence of world hunger is its greatest consequence.

Famines grab our headlines, yet famines account for less than 8 percent of hunger-related deaths. The remaining 92 percent are the result of chronic, persistent hunger - the silent, day-by-day killer that takes the lives of 20,000 people each and every day.

Chronic hunger is not an issue of food. Most hungry countries produce more than enough food.

Chronic hunger is a human issue. It occurs when people are systematically denied the opportunity to earn enough money, to produce enough food, to be educated, to learn the skills to meet their basic needs, and to have voice in the decisions that affect their lives.

When we speak of hungry people, we are literally talking about women and children. The vast majority of the world’s poor are women, and the gap between women and men caught in the cycle of poverty has continued to widen in the past decade.

An estimated 80 percent of the world’s refugees are women and children. Two-thirds of the world’s illiterates are female. Of the millions of children kept out of school, two-thirds are girls.

The social conditions that deny women their most basic rights are kept in place by violence and the ever-present threat of violence. In this new century - in the year 2003 - many societies still find it justifiable to beat, rape, stone, burn, disfigure and murder women.

There is growing recognition that the subjugation, marginalization and disempowerment of women is the fundamental cause of the remaining hunger in our world. Yet policies and programs have failed to incorporate this knowledge.

There are three ways that gender inequality is fundamentally linked to hunger.

Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) and caucus co-chair Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA).

1. Women’s well-being. Consider India and Bangladesh, which account for more than one-third of the world’s remaining hunger. One-third of all babies in Bangladesh and one-quarter of the babies in India are born underweight and malnourished. This compares to 12 percent in Africa.

Why are the rates of malnutrition higher in South Asia than in Africa - which is considerably less developed? A 1996 UNICEF study concluded, “The exceptionally high rates of malnutrition in South Asia are rooted deep in the soil of inequality between men and women.”

An insidious cycle of malnutrition persists in South Asia. A girl in India and Bangladesh is born underweight and malnourished. She is nursed less and fed less nutritious food than her brother. She is often denied health care and education. She is forced to work, even as a child. She is married and pregnant when she is young, often just a teenager. She is malnourished when she gives birth to babies, who are underweight and malnourished. And the cycle continues.

	Jane Simoneaux, Hunger Project investor from Washington State, speaking with Joan Holmes and Hunger Project staff member, Jim Goodman.

2. Women as producers. Just as we must learn to think “women” when we think “hungry people” - we must think “women” when we think “food producers.” And we do not. Women have been largely bypassed by programs for agricultural development.

In sub-Saharan Africa, women produce 80 percent of the food and do the vast majority of the work to process, transport, store and market Africa’s food. Yet women own only 1 percent of the land, receive 7 percent of farm-extension services, and receive less than 10 percent of the credit given to small-scale farmers.

If this weren’t challenging enough, African women food farmers are being devastated - and food production is further declining - because of HIV/AIDS, an epidemic fueled by gender inequality. Gender inequality keeps women uninformed about prevention, powerless to protect themselves, last in line for care and life-saving treatment - and imposes an overwhelming burden on them to care for the sick and dying.

3. Women’s leadership. In hungry countries, women bear full responsibility for the key issues in ending hunger: family health, nutrition, education and - increasingly - family income. Yet women traditionally have no say in decisions affecting these issues.

Studies show that when women gain voice in decision-making, they make health, education and income-generation their highest priorities. They take action against the practice of dowry, domestic violence, child marriage and child labor. They help other women to know their rights.

In India and Bangladesh, there is an extraordinary opportunity. New laws guarantee that one-third of all seats in elected local government are reserved for women.

As a result, in the region of the world where women have been the most subjugated, one million women have become elected local leaders - more elected women than in all the other countries of the world combined. This transfer of power to these one million elected women - who themselves are often illiterate and malnourished - is the greatest social experiment of our age.

It is time to dramatically re-examine our foreign aid programs. Ending hunger requires that the majority of resources be directed to empowering women. The GAINS legislation to be introduced shortly in Congress is one step in the right direction. The Millennium Challenge Account is an immediate opportunity to direct resources to the key change agents for the end of hunger - which in every developing country are women.

For the complete text of Joan's testimony or to watch the briefing video - as well as for background information on the GAINS legislation and Millennium Challenge Account - click here.