This document discusses gender and assets for food security. It summarizes that women are disproportionately affected by hunger and lack equal access to productive assets like land, credit, and training. Feed the Future aims to promote inclusive agricultural growth and improved nutrition with a focus on gender as a cross-cutting priority. Empowering women farmers by improving their access and control over assets is key to achieving global food security and reducing gender inequality, but requires understanding and addressing the social and legal barriers that currently limit women's rights and opportunities.

1. Gender and Assets
for Food Security
Lena Heron
USAID Bureau of Food Security
October 2011

2. The Challenge
• 925 million people
undernourished
• 3.5 million children die from
undernutrition each year
• Global food supplies need
to increase by an estimated
50 percent to meet
expected demand by 2030.
Women and children are disproportionately represented
amongst the one billion people around the world suffering
from chronic hunger.

3. L’Aquila Food Security Initiative
• 2009 G-8 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy
– President Obama pledged $3.5 billion over 3 years for
agriculture-led development
– Other donors pledged more than $18.5 billion in support
• 2009 World Summit on Food Security
– 193 countries endorsed a common approach based five
shared principles

4. Feed the Future pursues two paths:
• Addressing the root causes of hunger.
• Aligning our resources with country-owned processes and sustained,
multi-stakeholder partnerships.
Key Objectives
• Inclusive Agriculture Sector Growth
• Improved Nutritional Status
Cross cutting Priorities
• Gender
• Environment/Climate Change

6. Gender in the context of Feed the Future:
There is consistent and compelling evidence that when
the status of women is improved, agricultural
productivity increases, poverty is reduced, and nutrition
improves.
Achieving global food security will require…
• Recognizing the contribution of women to agricultural
production, and
• Reducing gender inequality.

7. Women – the majority of the agricultural workforce,
yet often:
• Lack access to land, water and other productive
assets;
• Lack access to credit, improved inputs, training and
information;
• Have more limited access to markets;
• Experience a greater time burden associated with
caregiving and household responsibilities;
• Have less control over household decision making.

8. But how do we empower women?
Gender inequalities are embedded in laws, rules and
social norms.
• In order to improve women’s access to and control
over assets, we must fully understand the current
patterns of access access—both the pros and cons.
• In order to effectively improve women’s access to
and control over assets, their rights must be ensured
both in law and practice.
• Approach change holistically. . .

9. • Why the gender gap is important;
• Results from a multi-country study to measure the
gap in women’s access;
• Drill down into specifics of access and various
approaches to improve access in different
development contexts;
• New efforts at USAID to measure women’s
empowerment;
• Open discussion of implications for programming.