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Knowledge4Policy
Knowledge for policy
Supporting policy with scientific evidence

We mobilise people and resources to create, curate, make sense of and use knowledge to inform policymaking across Europe.

  • Publication | 2022
Food Security and Gender Equality: A synergistic understudied symphony
Global Food and Nutrition Security

Trying to understand the links between gender equality and food security is a complicated effort— especially at a global level. FAO’s 2010-2011 report on the State of Food and Agriculture was one of the last global studies that presented new data and connections between gender equality, women, and food. Much of the world’s data on gender equality overlooks questions of food security. For example, of the 4 major global datasets on gender, including the World Bank’s Gender Data Portal, the only sex disaggregated food indicators reinforce women’s role solely for their importance in reproduction: measuring anemia in women of childbearing age, and counting stunting for children. Similarly, most food security datasets are strangely silent on gender. Four major global food datasets, ignore sex disaggregation or gender in the data around food—except to account for anemia in women of reproductive age.