Nourishing equality: Partners recommit to uniting for gender equality and nutrition

The fight for global nutrition is a fight for gender equality. It will be impossible to achieve one without the other. 

In pursuit of women’s rights and agreed global targets, governments and all development partners must unite to advance the mutually reinforcing agendas of gender equality and nutrition through reinvigorated policy and financial commitments. Fulfilling our promises demands that we redouble our efforts and recommit to advancing gender equality and ending malnutrition everywhere, especially in a changing climate.

This was the strong message delivered by four international partners – the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, Stronger Foundations for Nutrition, UNICEF and UN Women – as they joined forces at the Together for Nutrition event on 24 September during the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Gender equality is tied tightly to nutrition. A 2023 analysis from UNICEF found that from 2019 to 2021, the gender gap in food insecurity – a measure of gender inequality in access to sufficient and healthy food – had more than doubled. In the dozen countries hardest hit by the ongoing global food and nutrition crisis, the number of pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and adolescent girls suffering from acute malnutrition has soared by 25 per cent in just the past four years.

Furthermore, gender inequality and discrimination against women and girls hinder access to the critical components they need to afford healthy diets: education, health and social protection services, income, financial services, productive resources and decision-making power.

However, progress is possible. Since 1990, countries have worked to cut child stunting rates by almost half, and exclusive breastfeeding rates have increased similarly in the past decade, rising by 49 per cent globally since 2014.

When governments and development actors join forces, real change can happen.

Women and girls at higher risk of malnutrition throughout their lives

As highlighted in UNICEF’s 2023 report “Undernourished and Overlooked”, adolescent girls and women are facing a global nutrition crisis. More than a billion adolescent girls and women around the globe are suffering from undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and/or anaemia, with negative impacts not only on their own health and livelihoods but also on the health of their children. Worldwide, more than half of the 51 million children under 2 years of age who are stunted become so in utero and through the first six months after birth.

Meanwhile, for older girls, hunger and preventable or treatable illnesses continue to hamper learning and success. Poverty and food insecurity drive decisions around education, with parents often pulling girls out of school to be married or to work in the home.

In turn, low literacy and educational attainment among adolescent girls hinder their access to decent work, meaningful employment, and leadership and decision-making opportunities – rights that when unachieved predict and perpetuate intergenerational cycles of malnutrition. 

As adolescent girls progress into womanhood, their unpaid care and domestic work in families and communities impact their food security and nutrition. As highlighted by UN Women, climate change and environmental degradation are making water and nutritious foods more scarce while increasing the care needs of family members. Every day around the world, women spend two and a half times as many hours as men on unpaid care and domestic work.

A call to action on gender equality

Calling for the realization of women’s and girl’s right to food, the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action underscored that gender-based discrimination limits their access to nutrition and healthy diets.

Twenty-five years later, in 2020, the SUN Call to Action on gender equality reiterated that the world will fail to scale up nutrition if it does not address the drivers and impacts of gender-based discrimination.

SUN, UN Women, Stronger Foundations and UNICEF believe that there are multi-stakeholder and multisectoral solutions ready to scale now that can deliver the double dividend of an equitable and well-nourished world. The Nourish Equality investment agenda, for example, provides 11 specific investments for progress on the global imperative to improve nutrition among women and girls.

The transformative gender equality and nutrition agenda requires a broad movement of governments, civil society, regional and international organizations, academia, business, and bilateral and multilateral donors and foundations, all of whom must collaborate across sectors and departments and in the halls of development and humanitarian spaces.

Together, we must:

• Invest in high-impact, cost-effective nutrition interventions, including scaling up Essential Nutrition Actions in antenatal care and other primary health care services, supporting women’s choice to breastfeed, accelerating multisectoral action on anaemia and making child care more accessible
• Invest in addressing disparities within care work, including issues of time and energy poverty for mothers and caregivers and challenges related to remuneration, working conditions, skills and enabling environments among the largely female frontline health workforce
• Invest in uniting nutrition and education, including keeping girls in school, integrating gender-responsive health and nutrition education, and advocating for a healthy school food environment
• Foster economic empowerment for women and ensure their safety and resilience, including by enabling the role of women in climate-smart agriculture, delivering gender-responsive social protection, addressing gender-based violence, and meeting women’s needs as mothers and caregivers

Over the next year, several high-level events provide opportunities for countries and organizations to embed nutrition more firmly into the global development agenda while also ensuring that gender equality remains central to the fight against malnutrition:

• The 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) is set for 11–22 November in Baku, Azerbaijan.
• The 2024 SUN Global Gathering will be held 26–28 November in Kigali, Rwanda.
• The Sixty-ninth Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, which will celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (B+30), will take place at United Nations Headquarters in New York 10–21 March 2025.
• The 2025 Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit will be held 27–28 March in Paris.
• The 2025 World Health Assembly will take place 19–27 May 2025 in Geneva.
• The 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) will be held 10–21 November 2025 in Belém, Brazil.

We call on global governments and all development partners to center an agenda of gender equality and nutrition in policy and financial commitments at these forums in pursuit of the achievement of all global targets.

The world remains far from achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, including SDG 2 on Zero Hunger. The time for action – together – is now.