Documenting the links between gender and economic inequalities

The vicious circle of unrecognized and unpaid care work and poverty and their links with lack of access to social protection services and income security for women.

Context

In January 2021, in line with Action Against Hunger – International’s (AAH-I) Inernational Strategic Plan 3, which identifies poverty and gender inequalities as a root causes of hunger, Action Contre la Faim – France (ACF – France) developed a new advocacy strategy around the topics of gender and social justice.

In that process, two unforeseen factors emerged, in substance and in form:

• In substance: clear links exist between poverty (i.e., economic inequality) and gender inequality – AAH’s primary social group target in programming and research being poor women and their children – while social protection can have a transformative impact on both levels of inequalities.
• In form: existence of AAH produced evidence and knowledge on gender and economic inequalities, which has not yet been compiled and explicated in ways enabling its use for advocacy purposes.

Objective of the report

This report aims at compiling and articulating AAH-International’s existing data and knowledge on links between gender and economic inequalities in support to ACF-France’s ask for gender transformative universal social protection:

By doing so, this report wishes to highlighting the links between women’s poverty and women’s unrecognized and unpaid care work, and how these impact nutrition security and malnutrition, in an attempt to push for greater implementation of gender transformative universal social protection within France’s international financial and feminist policies, and in domestic policies of countries where ACF is present.