Women are more likely to experience food insecurity than men, and the pandemic has exacerbated this divide. Women continue to shoulder more household responsibilities, but also now bear the burden of increased poverty and health risks.
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“When it comes to food security during COVID, women have been more exposed pretty much in all the countries we have surveyed. They're the ones that collect the food, they harvest the food, and when there's no availability of food in the country, they are ones that suffer the most,” said Michelle Palacios Franco, a food security and livelihoods adviser at Action Against Hunger. “They eat less, and this is a given.”
But the exact extent to which women experience more hunger or malnutrition than men is not clear, experts say.
“Unfortunately, you can't draw those conclusions. We have some great qualitative data. That is women in their own words, talking about the food insecurity that they're facing and what they're doing to make ends meet for their family. But we don't have that kind of big picture countrywide data that we might like to have,” said Sarah Fuhrman, a humanitarian policy specialist with CARE International.

Omission from food insecurity analysis
The Integrated Phase Classification Acute Food Insecurity classification, which produces food insecurity analyses, forecasts, and famine warnings, does not provide gender-disaggregated data. The World Food Programme identifies women as a vulnerable population that faces increased risks of food insecurity, and has hunger and malnutrition estimates for pregnant and nursing women. But it does not provide overall gender-disaggregated data on food insecurity in its regular updates. READ FURTHER