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Gender, food security and nutrition

In 2021, between 828 million people in the world faced hunger. Around 670 million people may still face hunger in 2030, in part due to the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on global food security, which have resulted in 30 million more hungry people. 

Around 2.3 billion people in the world (29.3 percent) were moderately or severely food insecure in 2021 – 350 million more compared to before the outbreak of the COVID‑19 pandemic. Nearly 924 million people (11.7 percent of the global population) faced food insecurity at severe levels, an increase of 207 million in two years.

Globally, malnutrition, in all its forms, remains a major challenge for many countries.

An estimated 45 million children under the age of five were suffering from wasting, the deadliest form of malnutrition, and 149 million children under the age of five had stunted growth and development due to a chronic lack of essential nutrients in their diets, while 39 million were overweight.

The world is clearly not on track to achieving Zero Hunger and, if recent trends continue, the number of hungry people will rise due to conflicts, climate variabilities, extreme weather events and pandemics.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has a mandate to eliminate hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition, and supports countries in translating their political commitment to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development into concrete action.

Women and men play key and different roles in maintaining all four pillars of food security: as food producers and agricultural entrepreneurs, as “gatekeepers” who dedicate their own time, income and decision-making to maintain the food security of their households and communities, and as managers of the stability of food supplies in times of economic hardship. Women are also responsible for the nutritional security of their households, but their contributions often remain invisible and undervalued in policy, legal and institutional frameworks, thereby preventing them from reaching their full potential in improving food security.

Global food insecurity and inadequate nutrition are exacerbated by gender inequalities, which influence the access to food and other resources for men and women in urban and rural communities.

Gender inequalities and negative gender norms affecting women’s access to resources, services and inputs, such as land, knowledge, food, and sociocultural taboos, are both causes and consequences of poverty, food and nutrition insecurity. Vulnerable women, especially those in female-headed households, have limited access to nutrition information and the resources they need to improve food security. Compared to men, women are, globally, more vulnerable to food shortages, food insecurity and death due to malnutrition. In upper-middle and high-income countries, women are even more at risk of being overweight or obese.

Worldwide, the gender gap in food insecurity continued to rise in 2021 - 31.9 percent of women in the world were moderately or severely food insecure, compared to 27.6 percent of men.

In 2019, nearly one in three women aged from 15 to 49 years (571 million) were affected by anemia (FAO SOFI, 2021). Malnutrition in mothers, especially those who are pregnant or breastfeeding, can set up a cycle of deprivation that increases the likelihood of low birth weight, child mortality (45 percent of deaths in children under 5 years of age), serious disease, poor classroom performance and low work productivity. Women’s access to education is a determining factor in life expectancy, as data at global level show that children of mothers who attended school are 50 percent more likely to live beyond the age of five.

Interventions by FAO to improve household food security and nutrition address broader issues of livelihoods and gender equality, while also ensuring the equal access of men and women to natural and productive resources, such as land and mechanization, decent employment, advisory and financial services, and markets.

FAO supports evidence-based policy-making and knowledge generation and advocates for gender equality in policies, programmes and legal frameworks, such as the Committee on World Food Security.

At the institutional level, FAO strengthens the capacities of national and governmental institutions to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment, while at the community level it works with local communities, farmers’ organizations, community leaders and authorities to implement gender-responsive projects and programmes.

  • Women’s empowerment and closing the gender gap in agriculture and food systems are essential to eradicate hunger, malnutrition and poverty, and to reach the Sustainable Development Goal 2 target of Zero Hunger by 2030.
  • Women are slightly more food insecure than men both at global and regional levels.
  • Women’s food security and nutrition, as well as their income and decent employment opportunities, must be ensured in order to increase their productivity, improve their health status and maintain their general well-being, and that of their children, families and households.
  • Women’s empowerment often leads to improved nutrition due to its positive effects on child and maternal health.

  • Advocate for gender equality issues in international and national policy dialogues, so that women and girls can be empowered and all forms of malnutrition can be eradicated.
  • Design gender-responsive interventions with the aim of providing women and men with the same access to food, productive resources, education, decision-making power and economic opportunities along food value chains.
  • Strengthen the capacities of national institutions to collect and use sex-disaggregated data, in order to build a strong evidence base that can guide the design of adequate gender-responsive policies, strategies, laws and programmes, and monitor the gender impacts of food security and nutrition.
  • Identify and combat existing gender stereotypes and discriminatory gender norms affecting food security, nutrition and agriculture.
  • Target both women and men in nutrition education and training programmes on food production, aggregation, processing, distribution and marketing, as well as support behavioral change for food waste reduction and healthy dietary habits for gender-equitable consumption practices.
  • Recognize women’s unpaid care and productive work and adopt tailored measures to address their work burden and support the equal distribution of unpaid care and domestic work.

FAO-led Dimitra Clubs have engaged both women and men in initiatives targeting food security and nutrition. They have contributed to changing people’s behaviours in terms of diet, alleviating food taboos, ameliorating agricultural practices and choice of crops, and cultural practices that reinforced inequalities. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, through the Dimitra Clubs, members – women and men – were able to discuss and change 30 different food taboos that were affecting women’s nutrition.

To assess the nutrient intakes of women of reproductive age (WRA, aged 15–49 years), FAO and partners developed the Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women indicator, which is a dichotomous indicator of whether or not WRA have consumed at least five out of ten defined food groups the previous day or night. This is a proxy indicator for measuring the higher micronutrient adequacy, an important dimension of diet quality. It is the only standardized indicator focusing on women. It is now being used in many countries and increasingly integrated into large-scale surveys, such as the Demographic Health Survey.

The FAO/World Health Organization (WHO) Global Individual Food Consumption Data Tool (FAO/WHO GIFT) gathers and disseminates existing dietary data from all countries around the world. Data, shared through FAO/WHO GIFT, are age- and sex disaggregated to ensure that food and nutrient intakes highlight population groups of concern. The platform provides data to support policy-makers, programme planners, non-governmental organization staff and many other stakeholders, in taking informed and gender-responsive decisions to improve health and nutrition.