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A Review of Evidence on Gender Equality, Women’s Empowerment, And Food Systems

A Review of Evidence on Gender Equality, Women’s Empowerment, And Food Systems

by | Jun 26, 2024

Abstract 

Achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment in food systems can result in greater food security and better nutrition, and in more just, resilient, and sustainable food systems for all. This paper uses a scoping review to assess the current evidence on pathways between gender equality, women’s empowerment, and food systems.

The paper uses an adaptation of the food systems framework to organize the evidence and identify where evidence is strong, and where gaps remain. Results show strong evidence on women’s differing access to resources, shaped and reinforced by contextual social gender norms, and on links between women’s empowerment and maternal education and important outcomes, such as nutrition and dietary diversity.

However, evidence is limited on issues such as gender considerations in food systems for women in urban areas and in aquaculture value chains, best practices and effective pathways for engaging men in the process of women’s empowerment in food systems, and for addressing issues related to migration, crises, and indigenous food systems. And while there are gender-informed evaluation studies that examine the effectiveness of gender- and nutrition- sensitive agricultural programs, evidence to indicate the long-term sustainability of such impacts remains limited.

The paper recommends keys areas for investment: improving women’s leadership and decision-making in food systems, promoting equal and positive gender norms, improving access to resources, and building cross-contextual research evidence on gender and food systems.

Despite many constraints and limitations including lower access to opportunities, technologies, finance and other productive resources, and weak tenure and resource rights. These constraints and limitations are shaped and reinforced by social and structural inequalities in food systems. Stark gender inequalities are both a cause and outcome of unsustainable food systems and unjust food access, consumption, and production. In the agriculture sector, for example, evidence shows that women have unequal access.

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WFP-Nigeria country strategic plan (2023–2027)

WFP-Nigeria country strategic plan (2023–2027)

by | Feb 23, 2024

Executive Summary

Nigeria is still to match the ambition of its commitments despite measurable progress on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Even though Nigeria graduated to lower-middle-income status in 2014, its immense human development potential remains unfulfilled, and its most vulnerable people continue to suffer critical levels of food insecurity and malnutrition, driven by persistent conflict, organized violence, recurrent climate shocks and broad exposure to the impact of climate change.
Africa’s biggest economy and most populous country has the world’s fifth-highest burden of people experiencing food crisis or worse, exceeded only by Yemen, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. With at least 19.5 million people in need of urgent assistance in 2022 and some communities in the conflict-affected northeast projected to slide into catastrophic levels of food insecurity, targeted humanitarian action is urgently needed to save lives and livelihoods, requiring not only emergency responses but also anticipatory action.
Nigeria’s abundant natural resources and untapped human capital indicate the potential to achieve zero hunger, but one in three households cannot afford a nutritious diet and more than 100 million people report at least moderate food insecurity. The severity and magnitude of the regionalized crises have been compounded by the global food supply crisis, constraining Nigeria’s economic recovery from the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. WFP plans to expand its humanitarian operations in northeastern and northwestern Nigeria and among Cameroonian refugees in border state

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