Gender and nutrition
Many development interventions focus upon women as producers. Their role as consumers - and their own food security and nutritional concerns - are often neglected.
Women are particularly vulnerable to deficiencies in diet, at the various stages of their life cycle. Undernutrition during the early years reduces learning potential, their productivity over their lifetme and raises reproductive and maternal health risks. Cyclical loss of iron and childbearing pose further risks during puberty and adult life. Newborns and infants’ nutrition status is closely connected with the nutrition status of the mother before, during, and after pregnancy.
Women are therefore less able to gain access to other assets later in life and are caught in a vicious circle of poverty and undernutrition.
- Dietary diversity as a measure of women's diet quality in resource-poor areas: results from rural Bangladesh site
- In developing countries, where low-quality, monotonous grain- and tuber-based diets are the norm, the risk for micronutrient deficiencies is high, especially amongst women of reproductive age. However, despite being a global problem, data on women’s micronutrient status and the quality of women’s diets is scarce.
Latest Additions
- Briefing paper presenting lessons learned from working with women smallholders on food security
- R. Tripathi;K. Deering;N. Saracini / 2012
- This briefing paper is the result of a collaboration between nine different agencies, sharing lessons learned from working with women smallholders in order to close the gender gap in agriculture. Desp...
- Transforming gender in homestead food production
- Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, 2010
- In Bangladesh, Helen Keller International (HKI) is known for its homestead food production (HFP) programme, which promotes small-scale agriculture among women, specifically to improve women's and chil...
- Food Security and Gender Fact Sheet
- USA Agency for International Development , 2009
- This two-page brief summarises the key gender and food security issues common to most developing regions. It opens by stating that women are responsible for half of the world’s food production, ...
- Policy brief addressing under-nutrition in maternal and child health care
- United Nations [UN] Standing Committee on Nutrition , 2010
- This policy brief promotes the value of nutrition interventions, especially those focused on the “window of opportunity” from pregnancy to two years old, in reducing death, disease and avo...
- Exploring the nutritional gender gap
- V. Molini;M. Nubé / United Nations University - World Institute for Devlopment Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER), 2007
- Over the past 20 years Vietnam has experienced impressive economic growth which has been accompanied by increased food availability and consumption. In almost all Vietnamese regions, evidence shows im...
