Maleka Khatun sits in the doorway of her home near Kurigam, Bangladesh. Though Khatun said she completed her cooking an hour ago, there was too little left for her after her husband and children had eaten. She feared that this might be her family’s only meal that day. Photo: Oxfam
OK, so you know the global food crisis is affecting millions. But did you know that the crisis affects women even more than men?
That’s the subject of a recent brief by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Helping Women Respond to the Global Food Price Crisis. According to IFPRI,
Higher food prices increase the burden for women, who must stretch the limited food budget even further. Women often end up being the shock absorbers of household food security, reducing their own consumption to leave more food for other household members. In Bangladesh, even before the crisis, almost 60 percent of households reported that women skip meals more often than men.
As food prices rise and staples consume more of the food expenditures, households frequently cut back on both food quantity (caloric intake) and quality (dietary diversity), which provides micronutrients that girls and women particularly need…
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