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Gender and Food Security

Enhanced commitments to women to ensure food security: key baseline survey findings

Findings from a baseline study on Enhanced Commitments to Women

Authors:
Publisher: United Nations [UN] World Food Programme , 2007

Full text of document

This paper gives the results of a baseline study on the Enhanced Commitments to Women (ECW) programme. It was undertaken in 48 countries to assess how the World Food Programme’s (WFP) 2003-2007 Gender Policy was implemented.

Within the survey, there were two levels of analysis: 

  1. The country office self-assessment, conducted in 48 countries to see whether the ECW were reflected in the approved WFP project/programme documents and if they were implemented 
  2. The site level survey, conducted in 27 countries to verify the extent that ECW were implemented in the operational sites.
The anaysis covers the following issues:
  • nutrition - specific nutritional requirements of expectant and nursing mothers and adolescent males, raising health and nutritional awareness 
  • school feeding - expanding activities that enable girls to attend school 
  • Food for training (FFT) and food for work (FFW) activities - ensuring that women benefit at least equally from the assets created through FFT and FFW 
  • relief/general food distribution 
  • participation in decision making - ensuring that women are equally involved in food distribution committees and other programme-related local bodies 
  • gender mainstreaming - ensuring that gender is mainstreamed in gender activities 
  • advocacy - acknowledges the important role women play in ensuring household food security, thus playing a role in closing the gender gap.
The main body of the paper looks at the achievements and short comings of the ECW in relation to each of these points.