Wikigender > Wikis > At Issue paper: Do discriminatory social institutions matter for food security?

At Issue paper: Do discriminatory social institutions matter for food security?

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<p>In view of the 2012 United Nations Commission on the Status of Women’s thematic focus on rural women’s empowerment, the gender team at the Development Centre has launched an issues paper, <b>“<a href="http://oecd.org/dataoecd/41/22/49756756.pdf" alt="Do discriminatory social institutions matter for food security?">Do discriminatory social institutions matter for food security?</a>”</b>. 
</p><p>The paper finds that discrimination against women in accessing resources bears a significant relationship with agricultural production and food security. Understanding how these discriminatory social institutions affect rural women and agricultural production is critical for enhancing aid effectiveness and the design of targeted policies to address rural women’s inequality, poverty and food insecurity. This ‘At Issue’ follows our 2010 paper “<a href="http://oecd.org/dataoecd/11/56/45987065.pdf" alt="Gender Inequality and the MDGs: What are the Missing Dimensions?">Gender Inequality and the MDGs: What are the Missing Dimensions?</a>”.
</p><p>The paper uses the [Pagelink infos="2009 2009 Social Institutions and Gender Index|Social and Institutions and Gender Index"] (SIGI) to highlight the linages between discrimination against women in accessing resources and agricultural production and food sedcurity.
</p><p>The SIGI helps to improve our understanding of what drives gender inequalities in education, employment, political participation, to make visible the invisible; it informs effective policies to tackle the power relations at the heart of gender inequality; enables comparisons across countries and regions; and tracks changes over time to assess what drives change. Learn more about the [Pagelink infos="2009 2009 Social Institutions and Gender Index"].
</p>
<div id="toc"><h2>Table of Contents</h2>
<ul>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#w_background"><span class="tocnumber">1</span> <span class="toctext">Background</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#w_main-findings"><span class="tocnumber">2</span> <span class="toctext">Main findings</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#w_references"><span class="tocnumber">3</span> <span class="toctext">References</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#w_see-also"><span class="tocnumber">4</span> <span class="toctext">See Also</span></a></li>
</ul>
</div><h2 id="w_background">Background</h2>
<p>There is evidence from several country studies that there are links between rural women’s empowerment and food security:
</p>
<ul><li>In [Pagelink infos="Gender Equality in Ghana"], greater ownership of property by women has been found to have  positive impact on their ability to spend money:
</li></ul>
<p><b>1% increase in property owned by rural women results in 2.8% increase of monthly expenditure on food</b><ref>Doss, Cheryl. 2006. "The Effects of Intrahousehold Property Ownership on Expenditure Patterns in Ghana." Journal of African Economies 15(1):149–80.</ref> 
</p>
<ul><li>In [Pagelink infos="Gender Equality in Nepal"], women’s land ownership has been linked with better outcomes for children: 
</li></ul>
<p><b>8% of children are severely underweight in households where mother owns land in comparison to 14% of severely undernourished children living in landless or landed households.</b><ref>Allendorf, K. 2007. Do Women’s Land Rights Promote Empowerment and Child Health in Nepal?  World Development, Volume 35, Issue 11, November 2007, pp. 1975–1988.</ref>
</p>
<ul><li> In [Pagelink infos="Gender Equality in India"], <b>42% of children are underweight and only 13.7% of women have decision-making power within household</b>.<ref>HUNGaMa Survey Report, 2011. Fighting Hunger & Malnutrition, Naandi Foundation, India.</ref>  
</li></ul>
<p>We wanted to see what the SIGI could tell us about the relationship between rural women’s access to resources and food security – in particular child malnutrition and agricultural production.
</p>
<h2 id="w_main-findings">Main findings</h2>
<ul><li>For 2009, on average, countries where women have equal rights to land had yields of around 3250 kg/hectare, three times more than those countries where women had no or few rights to land.
</li></ul>
<p><br />
</p>
<ul><li>From 1980 to 2009, cereal yields increased by 60% in countries where women have equal access to land, compared to only 6% where women have few or no rights to land.
</li></ul>
<p><br />
[File file=SIGI agricultural production 2012 At Issue DEV paper.jpg|350px]
<br />
</p>
<ul><li>Countries where women lack any right to own land have on average 60% more malnourished children:
</li></ul>
<p><br />
[File file=SIGI malnutrition 2010 At Issue DEV paper.jpg|350px]
<br />
For more information and background reading on this, please see our previous paper on “<a href="http://oecd.org/dataoecd/11/56/45987065.pdf" alt="Gender Inequality and the MDGs: What are the Missing Dimensions?">Gender Inequality and the MDGs: What are the Missing Dimensions?</a>”.
</p>
<h2 id="w_references">References</h2>
<p><references />
</p>
<h2 id="w_see-also">See Also</h2>
<ul><li>Online Discussion: [Pagelink infos="Empowering_Rural_Women|Equal rights to resources: the key to empowering rural women. But what's stopping it?"]
</li><li><a href="http://www.wikigender.org/images//4/41/Online_discussion_Summary_Final.pdf" alt="Summary report from the Online Discussion">Summary report from the Online Discussion</a>
</li></ul>
<p><br />
 
</p>

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