When Gender Inequalities Feed Hunger: The Key Role of Economic Justice

Gender and Nutrition: A Proven Link, a Systemic Issue

Gender inequalities are both a cause and a consequence of undernutrition. Several risk factors are now well established: women’s workload burden, poor maternal health and lack of appropriate family planning, limited access to education for girls and women, early pregnancies and premature births, women’s low decision‑making power within households, women’s social status and gender norms.

Their reduced access to resources, income, education, health, mobility, or decision‑making significantly weakens their ability to cope with undernutrition. 

Political and Economic Choices Are Not Neutral

The inequalities experienced by women are not the result of cultural fatalism: they stem from political and institutional choices. Systems shaped within patriarchal environments tend to make women’s nutritional needs invisible and reinforce existing power structures.

Economic Injustice: A Major Driver of Food Insecurity

Unequal Access to Resources and Opportunities

Women face a series of systemic economic inequalities internationally and in France.

• limited access to education and lower literacy rates; 

• lifetime wage gaps; 

• overrepresentation in precarious and informal employment; 

• barriers to land, credit, entrepreneurship, and financial services; 

• low representation in economic decision‑making bodies. 

In the economy, gender norms create a division of labor that gives men control over resources and financial services, while women are confined to domestic and care roles.

The heavy workload placed on women — stemming notably from the lack of recognition of unpaid domestic labor — further limits their economic empowerment and increases the risks of undernutrition. It dramatically reduces their free time, including the time needed to rest or engage in income‑generating activities.

Women are too often relegated to informal sectors. Poorly protected and underrepresented, they are particularly exposed to economic violence: confiscated earnings, enforced dependency, lack of social rights. Women become trapped in cycles where precariousness fuels violence, and violence reinforces precariousness.

Economic violence contributes to a continuum of violence, linking and reinforcing different forms of gender‑based violence and creating an environment where inequalities, discrimination, and violence against women accumulate

Women and Agriculture: Huge Potential… Still Blocked

Agricultural value chains are also a major source of inequality. Women represent nearly 40% of the agricultural workforce, yet receive only a limited share of the income generated, due to multiple factors: limited financial literacy, unequal access to credit, lower wages.

Women’s exclusion from land ownership is a global phenomenon. In Africa, the share of land owned by women ranges from 5% to 30%, even though they make up 80% of the agricultural workforce.

Yet, according to a 2023 FAO study, ensuring equality in agrifood systems could generate USD 1 trillion and reduce the number of food‑insecure people by 45 million

Project Focus: RESILAC, a Model of Inclusive Economic Empowerment

The RESILAC project is a regional program implemented in Chad, Cameroon and Nigeria to strengthen the economic and social resilience of communities in the Lake Chad Basin. Co‑funded by the European Union and AFD, it is carried out by Action Against Hunger, CARE and Groupe URD, together with local partners.

The project supports economic recovery, employment and the development of diversified production systems. Gender analyses reveal that women have very limited access to economic resources. To address this, RESILAC promotes women’s financial empowerment through income‑generating activities and Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs), which facilitate savings and access to credit.

Finally, the project trains municipalities in gender‑responsive budgeting so that local policies genuinely contribute to gender equality.

Conclusion: Gender Equality, an Essential Lever to End Hunger

International research is unequivocal: no hunger‑reduction strategy can succeed without economic justice and gender equality. When women have the same resources, rights, and opportunities as men, communities grow more resilient, food security improves, and cycles of malnutrition decline.

This is why Action Against Hunger is committed to continuing and scaling up its efforts to deeply transform the systems that perpetuate inequality.