Ignoring Women Will Prevent Us from Solving the Hunger Crisis
CARE’s new report on the importance of tackling gender inequality in response to the COVID-19 and hunger crises.
CARE’s new report, Left Out and Left Behind: Ignoring Women Will Prevent Us from Solving the Hunger Crisis, focuses on the importance of tackling gender inequality in response to the COVID-19 and hunger crises. The report discusses how the COVID-19 crisis, food and nutrition security, and gender inequality intersect and the ways in which women are already leading in the response. The report also reveals the glaring gap in the global response to the crisis around tackling gender inequality.
Despite the many barriers they face, women and girls are instrumental to food systems and are already leading the charge to meet COVID-19-related challenges. Addressing gender inequalities will help deconstruct the barriers these women face, boosting productivity, promoting good nutrition, and leading to better outcomes for women, girls, and their communities. Women leaders at all levels are finding solutions: from planting crops during curfew to keeping markets open, to supporting the poorest people in their communities.
CARE interviewed more than 4500 women from 64 countries about how the pandemic is affecting their livelihoods, and ability to feed their families.
From the Philippines to Palestine, Bangladesh to Zimbabwe, women around the world shared their experiences.
“Most importantly, we are able to eat our own produce, and we can save for more important needs. Since we have our own crops in our backyard, we still eat three times a day. We give our extra supply of vegetables to our neighbours if we know they have limited resources for that day.”
— Amalia Batallones and her husband are both farmers, growing rice, vegetables and fruits in the Philippines.
“The insurgence in of the coronavirus in Ghana brought a lot of challenges but the Market Queen*, Nana Kyeiwaa, was very helpful. She ensured the market women adhered to the protocols instituted by the government. Nana Kyeiwaa herself went to the extent of standing at one of the entrances to make sure that those protocols were observed.”
— Akua Duruwaa is an egg seller at the Rail Cross Market in Kumasi, Ghana. Market Queens* are women traders who have the connections and influence to organize women, adjust market prices, and influence trading patterns in their area. Faced with government shutdowns in local markets to stop the spread of COVID19, these women found ways to organize social distancing and keep the markets open so people could eat.
“With the lockdown affecting people’s ability to sell their products, and with the lack of food. I launched an initiative with the women of Jalamah. It started as an ad hoc WhatsApp group, where I offered to exchange extra fertilizer for a pesticide for my tomatoes. In no time, women started to follow, offering other inputs and suggesting exchange of produce too! The initiative has created a sense of community. The WhatsApp group has become a source of information, knowledge and experience. And we [provide] social support. With the no-human-to-human interaction, the group has bonded and become a platform for sharing thoughts and feelings, something that’s of huge importance during a crisis.”
— Um Muhammed Shabaan is a farmer from north west bank, Palestine. Her husband is a technician and they have 4 children.
“I had to sell 10 of my chickens in the first few days of COVID-19 to afford groceries. However, now I collect and sell their eggs in the local market and I teach literacy program to women in my home, this gives me a chance to feed my family and support my husband in these trying times.”
— Zainab is a day labourer, selling chickens, while also teaching women in the IDP settlement she lives in, in Kabul, Afghanistan.
“Food security for women is important because women are at a higher risk in any crisis. If women have food security, they get the mental strength to protect their families in any sort of crisis. They can share their courage with everyone.”
— Shadhona Rani Shutradhar earns a living through tailoring and poultry rearing. She lives with her husband who is a carpenter and 4 children in Mistrihati, Bangladesh.
“The men are more in the fields and the women are involved in trade, but they all do the work. Very few men in my community leave all the responsibilities of the house to the women.”
— Lénard Marius, is a widow and mother of 7 children and lives in Pinquet, Haiti.
“It is great to have women’s leadership. You empower a woman; you empower a whole nation, especially through the exposure it gives, because as the saying goes, ‘seeing is believing.”
— Hawa Dekow Ali is a pastoralist rearing animals, a teacher and a single mother with her 9 children in Garissa, Kenya.
“Women we are mostly affected with hunger because when we are only able to find small amounts of food, we often eat last and least though we have the most responsibilities in the home, sacrificing ourselves for the children.”
— Nyaruon Maluok, lives in Rubkona County, Unity State South Sudan and is currently not employed and her husband does casual work.
“Our biggest concern is access to money. Due to the coronavirus-imposed restrictions, money is now difficult to access as we cannot travel to trade. It is a stressful situation.”
— Thandiwe Chikanga, from Tarusarira, Masvingo Province in Zimbabwe, is married and has 11 children. She is the sole provider for her family; managing a backyard food garden with fishponds and two wells, and she also rears and sells chickens.
But where are women in the COVID-19 Response?
Given the leadership that women are showing, it is disappointing to see global responses to COVID-19 and related hunger crises are either ignoring women and girls or treating them as victims who have no role in addressing the problems they face.
CARE’s new analysis of 73 global reports proposing solutions to the hunger pandemic shows that:
- Nearly half of the reports — 46% — do not refer to women and girls at all.
- None of the reports consistently analyze or reflect the gendered effects of the pandemic and hunger crises.
- Only 5 reports — less than 7% — propose concrete actions to resolve the gender inequalities crippling food systems. The rest overlook or ignore women and girls.
Key Recommendations from the Report:
The report includes actionable recommendations for governments and UN actors to curb the hunger crisis, address gender inequality in the COVID-19/hunger crisis response, and create equal food systems.
- Governments immediately scale up gender-responsive social safety nets and minimize disruptions to agriculture and markets with a specific focus and measurable targets on women food producers and female-headed households.
- All donors, UN agencies, and governments publicly commit that all funding supports gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment, and at least half of food and nutrition security funding supports women and girls directly.
- Governments include at least one gender expert on all of their COVID-19 response teams — at national and local levels — and ensure that all decisions and data in these committees are based on solid gender analysis and meaningful engagement with women and girls.
- All COVID-19 coordination, planning, and priority-setting platforms be gender-balanced, with representation from local women-led and women’s rights organizations.
- All donors, UN agencies, and governments support much needed transformations in food systems; most importantly, to recognize women and girls as leaders in food systems and to ensure that they have equal rights and equal access to resources as producers and consumers.
- The UN Secretary General’s Policy Brief on the Impact of COVID-19 on Food Security and Nutrition be updated to include gender inequality and make clear recommendations to address it in the COVID-19 response and recovery.
