Why women and girls experience poorer nutrition and how to close the gender gap

This March, we’re celebrating International Women’s Day – a day to honor the achievements of women worldwide and draw attention to the inequities still present for most women today.

While action is being taken by many actors to close the gender gap in nutrition, women and girls still disproportionately suffer from poorer nutrition. In fact, 60 percent of the 820 million people with chronic malnutrition are women and girls. The reason for this discrepancy is that nutrition and gender are deeply interwoven. Women and girls are negatively impacted both by how food is produced, sourced, and distributed as well as how nutrition services are provided and accessed. Meanwhile, oppressive gender norms and gender-based violence (GBV) that create gender inequality perpetuate the poor health and nutrition of women and girls and their ability to access help.

For example, in emergencies, when food supplies are often affected, women and girls are more likely to experience undernutrition or malnutrition than men and boys. They will likely be allocated less food to eat or restrict their eating – in the case of many mothers – in efforts to provide enough food for the children or others.

When women and girls try to access humanitarian nutrition services, they face many unique hurdles, including insecurity and discrimination. Displacement can further compound a woman’s insecurity, as in the case of breastfeeding mothers who may not have a private space to breastfeed and who will require more breastfeeding, mental health, and parenting support. In instances of hunger and famine, girls’ risk of exploitation, female genital mutilation, and/or child marriage increases, as does their likelihood of being taken out of school.

Women and girls also have different nutritional needs. While they need less calories per day, their nutrient needs are the same as men and boys. That means they must be able to access enough nutrient-dense foods to maintain their health, yet these foods – fresh vegetables, fruits, and proteins – are frequently the most expensive. Micronutrient deficiencies disproportionately affect women and girls, with anemia being a leading cause of death among pregnant teenagers. Anemia can also cause cognitive impairment and weaker muscle function and complications for women during pregnancy and childbirth. For their unborn children, their poor health can directly affect their children’s development and can lead to more childhood stunting and even child deaths.

As such, gender inequality is both a cause and a consequence of malnutrition for women and girls and the knock-on consequences they experience, such as less livelihood and educational opportunities over their lifetime, poorer health, and greater risks of exploitation.

What can nutrition actors do to close the gender gap?

With such glaring disparities between genders, it's safe to say that nutrition actors play a central role in ensuring women and girls have equal access to the nutrition services and foods they need to live healthy lives. It also affirms the need for nutrition actors to apply a gender lens to any nutrition intervention.

IASC Gender with Age Marker suggests nutrition actors follow the steps below to ensure everyone is equally able to access and benefit from nutrition programs. This and more information can be found also on their Tip Sheet:

• Integrate the gender perspectives from rapid participatory assessments with women, girls, boys, and men of diverse backgrounds into the initial nutritional status analysis. Use this to identify groups most at risk of poor nutrition and health.
• Examine whether at-risk groups (for example, female headed households, older women or men, gender diverse people, people living with HIV/AIDS) are accessing adequate food and the food basket meets their specific needs. Take action to address barriers following consultation.
• Use information on age- and sex-specific incidence of illnesses, nutrition indicators and health conditions to tailor activities.
• Review the effectiveness of the nutrition programs for women and men as well as boys and girls in different age groups.

What the GNC Technical Alliance is doing to address the gender gap in nutrition

The Alliance’s Gender and Gender-Based Violence (GBV) Workstream was formed in 2020 and works to support and guide nutrition practitioners to integrate gender equality and GBV risk mitigation into emergency nutrition programs. We advise the Technical Support Team on how best to apply a gender lens when supporting remotely or in-country and work to strengthen their capacity to address gender and GBV in emergencies. Finally, the Workstream advocates for gender equality and GBV risk mitigation within the wider nutrition sector and develops ‘best practices’ and resources to help nutrition actors achieve these goals.

If your team needs further support or training to implement a nutrition approach that adequately addresses these gender inequalities, we are happy to assist you. You can request support from our Technical Support Team here.

Where do we go from here?

As a humanitarian community, we need a unified commitment across the sector to address these issues head-on if we want to see improvements in the quality and effectiveness of nutrition programs for women and girls. That starts with putting gender equality at the center of all we do and actively championing the needs of women and girls in our humanitarian responses, and it requires working together in a multi-sector approach.

The future of women and girls depends on it.

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If you would like to learn more and increase your capacity to address the unique needs of women and girls in your nutrition program, the GNC Technical Alliance is available to you for help.

>> Request support from the Technical Support Team here.

For more helpful resources, check out:

•  Briefs on the linkages between Gender-based Violence & Nutrition (Global Nutrition Cluster)
• Gender Transformative Framework for Nutrition (Gender Nutrition Framework)
• Gender Equality In Nutrition Tip Sheet (IASC GAM)
• Promoting Gender-Transformative Parenting (UNICEF)
• Undernourished & Overlooked: ​​A Global Nutrition Crisis in Adolescent Girls & Women (UNICEF)
•  Food Insecurity & Gender Equality (CARE)