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United Nations University
UNU-WIDER
- World Institute for Development Economics
Research of the United Nations University
Policy Brief
Number I - 2008
CAN WE ERADICATE HUNGER?
THE STATUS OF WOMEN MATTERS FOR FOOD
SECURITY
INTRA-HOUSEHOLD FOOD SECURITY: THE
ROLE OF WOMEN
The status of women in a society has
telling effects on both the intra-household distribution of food, as well as
its total availability. Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis and Guatam Hazarika (Food
Security, Chapter 5) find that in Pakistan, for example, the relative standing
of a mother compared to her husband - measured by differential educational
attainment - as well as her access to cash income, is positively associated
with the improved nutritional status of her children. Further, the mother's
relative standing is also associated with less spending on adult goods
(alcohol, tobacco). Taken together, these results suggest that policy
initiatives that seek to improve child nutritional status should focus in part
on improving the relative bargaining power of women in households, through
access to education.
Although the relationship of gender,
food security, and rural livelihoods has been acknowledged in the literature on
HIV/AIDS impacts, relatively few studies provide empirical evidence among
vulnerable households....
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The first Millennium Development
Goal (MDG) is to halve poverty and hunger by 2015. Hunger and malnutrition are
major causes of the deprivation and suffering targeted by all of the other
MDG's. Without rapid progress in reducing hunger, achieving the other MDG's
related to poverty reduction, education, child mortality, maternal health, and
disease will be impossible....
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