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1,000 Days and International Women’s Day: Liberation and Nutrition

thousanddays.nodeWe are proud to be a part of the 1,000 Days global initiative, the United Nations Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) initiative and other global and national forums advocating for a priority on nutrition. On the occasion of International Women’s Day 2014 (March 8), Hunger Project Executive Vice President John Conrood contributed to the 1,000 Days Nutrition Newsroom blog on Liberation and Nutrition. An excerpt follows:

One promise all of us in the development world need to make is to stop being satisfied with incremental progress on gender in our programs. We currently are happy when a food security initiative improves its reach to women farmers from 20% to 25%. Pretty good? No – just less bad. One of the founding mothers of gender in development – Ester Boserup – wrote otherwise as far back as 1974. She pointed out that interventions that fail to deliver the majority of impact to women are actually making matters worse, because they are widening the gender gap. Fifty-one percent needs to be our minimum standard.

The liberation of hundreds of millions of women and girls across the developing world is happening now. It is the moral issue of our age, and one of the greatest advances in human justice in history. Its legacy will be a better nourished, healthier, more vibrant and just future for everyone.

Read the full piece on 1,000 Days Partnership Nutrition Newsroom.