Food Security, Productivity, and Gender Inequality - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 292

would also improve the chances of achieving several millennium development goals,
such as ending poverty and hunger, increasing gender equality, and improving child
health and maternal health.
An additional challenge lies in improving the statistical data base for assessing and
monitoring gender-differentiated access to land, farm credit, inputs, technical informa-
tion, and marketing, as well as monitoring nutrition and health indicators for women
and children in both poor and nonpoor households.
Concluding Comments
Ensuring food security is both the most basic of development issues and the most
complex. Gender inequalities are a significant part of the problem and reducing those
inequalities will be a critical part of the solution. The inequalities women face as produc-
ers reduces the potential productivity of agriculture and hence of overall food availabil-
ity in countries, regions, and worldwide. It does so both by failing to take into account
the specific constraints that women farmers face, even as dependence on women farm-
ers is growing; and by failing to recognize that in particular contexts the productivity
gains would be higher if existing inputs were directed at women. Estimates indicate the
potential of substantial productivity gains from bridging gender gaps in land security
and access to inputs and services. However, this will need not only technical and finan-
cial support but also institutional innovation, including more group approaches to farm
investment and management.
Similarly, the inequalities women face as consumers adversely affects both their own
well-being as well as that of future generations of children who inherit the disabilities
arising from poor maternal health. Reducing inequalities embedded in women's access
to income-earning opportunities and productive assets would thus benefit not only the
women themselves but also their children, by enhancing women's bargaining power
within the home and so their ability to direct more household resources to children's
well-being.
Reducing gender inequalities faced by women as farmers and workers is, therefore,
an imperative, both for its intrinsic importance and for its wider implications. Doing
so would prove to be a wise strategy for tackling the food crises and creating a more
food-secure world.
Notes
1. This is an updated and revised version of a working paper, Agarwal (2011). I am grate-
ful to Ronald Herring for his comments on an earlier draft. I also thank Frances Stewart,
Ana Cortez, Hiroshi Kawamura, Raghav Gaiha, Ramesh Chand, Joachim von Braun, Sara
Ahmed, and Sudipto Mundle for their helpful comments on a draft of the working paper;