July 26, 2024 – According to a new report released this week by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), approximately 733 million people faced hunger in 2023, equivalent to one in eleven people globally. This dire reality is driven by a confluence of conflict, climate change and economic shocks.
Data from the report also reminds us that the burdens of the global hunger crisis are not shared equally: women and girls are disproportionately impacted. CARE’s analysis of the underlying data on food insecurity shows that the gender hunger gap in 2023 stood at 69 million more women and girls who were food insecure than men and boys. Although this is an improvement over 2022, we are still not back to pre-pandemic levels.
All too often, women and girls eat less and last. And around the world, women are more at-risk during crises because prevailing gender inequality perpetuates dominance over women and girls and creates systemic barriers to their access to rights, services, and livelihood opportunities, especially during conflicts and climate shocks.
Despite this significant disparity, the organizations that track global hunger lack timely and actionable data to close the gender hunger gap. This is because there is still a long way to go to ensure the consistent collection and analysis of both quantitative sex, age, and disability disaggregated data, and more qualitative gender analysis. Without disaggregated data and gender analysis, we are missing critical information on who is most impacted by hunger and how, including failing to understand implications on health, nutrition, and the protection of different population groups. This leads to poorly designed responses that can even do harm, including the risk of increasing Gender Based Violence and other forms of exploitation and abuse.
But interventions based on comprehensive data and designed with crisis-affected people in mind – especially women and girls – can reverse the hunger crisis and build equitable, resilient, climate-smart, and gender-just food systems. Empowering and supporting local women leaders to reach communities affected by food insecurity is a MUST. Yet women and the organizations they lead face disproportionate barriers to access funding, resources, and decision-making.
Food insecurity is not a given, it’s a concession to inaction when man-made factors are the most significant drivers of hunger. But gender-blind solutions cannot solve a crisis that is shaped by gender inequality. If this continues, more women AND men will continue to go hungry.
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