Loading

Género y nutrición Kit de herramientas de comunicación

Content:

  1. Familiarize yourself with the gender and nutrition key messages
  2. Learn how you can take action
  3. International Women's Day 2023
  4. Download and share our social media assets

Background

Women and nutrition are connected in many ways. Gender inequality is both a cause and effect of malnutrition, hunger and poverty. We will not succeed in scaling up nutrition if we do not address the drivers and impacts of gender-based discrimination.

The Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement recognizes that embracing equity must be at the centre of nutrition action, promoting diversity, inclusion and the empowerment of women and girls. It takes an ecosystem – from households to communities and their leaders, laws and policies – to empower women and girls.

Women play significant roles in the delivery of good nutrition in their communities and families, but the inequalities they experience in the sociology and politics of food production and consumption and access to services increases their vulnerability to the impacts of malnutrition and its unique adverse ripple effects of significant and long-term health and economic costs.

Actions that recognize and address gender and social inequalities are empowering and effective ways of tackling malnutrition. At the same time, nutrition investments provide important entry points to addressing the underlying drivers of inequality, including educational opportunities, household power and income distribution, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and gender-based violence and harmful practices – including child, early and forced marriage.

For these reasons, the SUN Movement places great value on efforts to integrate gender equality and nutrition actions, bring healthy nutrition to more women and girls, and include more women and girls in efforts to fight malnutrition.

With this communications toolkit, the SUN Movement aims to:

  • Amplify the initiatives that countries are carrying out to scale up gender-transformative nutrition actions
  • Support countries in raising awareness on the essential links that connect nutrition, empowerment and the benefits of gender equality for all individuals, families, societies and nations
  • Call on all stakeholders to integrate a gender lens as part of good nutrition, food security and the reduction of inequalities

Key messages

Today, women and girls make up 60 per cent of those around the globe with chronic malnutrition.
  • More than a billion adolescent girls and women suffer from undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and anemia.
  • Nearly 30 per cent of women of reproductive age (15–49 years old) suffer from iron deficiency anaemia. Low iron can cause poor attention and low work productivity, negatively impacting income-generating abilities.
  • Undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and anaemia amplify gender inequalities by lowering learning potential, wages and life opportunities for adolescent girls and women, weakening their immunity to infections, and increasing their risk of life-threatening complications during pregnancy and childbirth (source: UNICEF).
In the 12 countries hardest-hit by the global food and nutrition crisis, the number of pregnant and breastfeeding women and adolescent girls suffering from acute malnutrition has soared from 5.5 million to 6.9 million – or 25 per cent – since 2020.
Women play an integral part in all aspects of efforts to achieve global and national nutrition goals.

It is essential to target women and girls in efforts to improve nutrition and food security.

  • Women make up more than half of the global agriculture workforce but remain the minority when it comes to decision-making.
  • If women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could raise total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5–4 per cent, reducing the number of hungry people in the world by 12–17 per cent.

Gender inequalities restrict livelihoods and education and growth opportunities for women and girls, limiting access to and control over the resources they need to meet their unique nutrition needs.

The global food crisis is deepening the nutrition crisis for adolescent girls and women.
  • The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed gaps that have always required a gender-transformative approach. In just a few months, COVID-19 undid decades of progress towards improved nutrition. Women and girls are facing disruptions in access to nutrition and other essential services, and these realities further limit their ability to realize their nutritional needs and, in turn, can change the trajectories of their lives forever.
  • Climate change risks exacerbating inequalities in nutrition, food security and gender equality: negatively impacting food systems, shifting disease burden and increasing climate induced migration. Women and girls already eat last and least, so the combined impact of diminishing resources and limited decision-making power over allocation of increasingly scarce resources mean this crisis will deepen the systemic inequality that holds women and girls back from realizing their right to good nutrition. (source: Gender Transformative Nutrition Framework, A Nutrition Crisis in a Warming World)
  • Adolescence is a “critical window” of opportunity to improve girls’ nutritional status and empowerment. It is essential that the voices of young and adolescent girls are included and amplified, enabling them to become change agents in nutrition actions at all levels.
Nutrition services and social protection programmes are failing to meet the nutrition needs of adolescent girls and women, especially in humanitarian settings.
  • Paying attention to the nutritional needs of boys and men also is important. Action should be taken to ensure that boys and men are not only instrumental to empowering women and girls and helping achieve gender equality in nutrition, and it should be recognized that they also are affected by malnutrition and poverty and face specific vulnerabilities and limitations based on their gendered roles.
  • Investing in an intentional gendered approach to the fight against malnutrition can produce a double dividend: accelerating the eradication of malnutrition and advancing gender equality.

How you can take action:

With the mounting pressures on food and nutrition security and rapidly approaching deadlines for the global nutrition targets, governments and their development and humanitarian partners – national and international – must take the lead in accelerating progress for adolescent girls’ and women’s nutrition (source: UNICEF).

Everyone can play a role and ensure a gender component of nutrition actions at the country level by:

  • Promoting the appointment of women as SUN Government Focal Points – those high-level SUN Country government officials charged with coordinating multistakeholder nutrition actions in their countries.
  • Supporting SUN Countries to scale up gender-transformative actions in their national nutrition plans.
  • Advocating for women and women-specific nutrition issues at global, regional and national levels.
  • Supporting women and girls having a voice at global, regional and national nutrition events.
  • Including gender- and nutrition-specific technical issues in our capacity-building initiatives.
  • Convening SUN Movement stakeholders to advance the gender/nutrition approach.
  • Sharing gender/nutrition knowledge and good practices with SUN Movement stakeholders.
  • Surveying and measuring, annually through the SUN Movement Joint Annual Assessment, the impacts of malnutrition on women in SUN Countries.

Learn more about Gender in Multisectoral Nutrition Action Plans here.

International Women's Day 2023

This International Women’s Day will be marked around the world on 8 March 2023 under the theme Embrace Equity.

This theme calls on everyone to play their part, challenging gender stereotypes, calling out discrimination, drawing attention to bias, and seeking out inclusion.

What does this mean for the nutrition community? Here are a few examples of how SUN members are embracing equity this International Women’s Day and beyond.

UNICEF launches Women and Nutrition Report

Ahead of International Women's Day, UNICEF issued its latest report Undernourished and Overlooked: A Global Nutrition Crisis in Adolescent Girls and Women.

According to the report, the number of pregnant and breastfeeding adolescent girls and women suffering from acute malnutrition has soared from 5.5 million to 6.9 million – or 25 per cent – since 2020 in 12 countries hardest hit by the global food and nutrition crisis.

The report calls for governments, development and humanitarian partners and donors, civil society organizations and development actors to transform food, health and social protection systems for adolescent girls and women.

Burundi empowers women journalists to report on nutrition and food security

Women journalists have a crucial role to play in the fight against malnutrition. Their reporting, investigation, and advocacy can help to raise awareness, bring attention to the issue, and drive change that can ultimately improve the lives of millions of people affected by malnutrition.

This is why, the Permanent Executive Secretariat of the Multisectorial Nutrition and Food Security Platform in Burundi, in collaboration with the Burundian Women Journalist Association, and through a partnership with the Ministry of Communication, Information Technology and Media, organized a workshop aimed to equip women journalists with the basic knowledge of nutrition and food security, as well as the multisectorial coordination approach.

Women SUN National Nutrition Youth Leaders

On the occasion of International Women's Day 2023, the SUN Civil Society Network asked their Women National Nutrition Coordinators what "equity" means for them.

Women and Youth’s Empowerment Strategy for the SUN Business Network (SBN)

The SBN 3.0 strategy highlights the empowerment of women and youth entrepreneurs among cross-cutting priority areas needed to effectively implement its strategic approach to reduce malnutrition in all its forms.

However, the focus of this strategy goes beyond entrepreneurship to include deliberate strategies to support the creation of equitable employment opportunities for youth and women, along with supporting their development and filling the gaps in their ability to launch and sustain businesses or find non-precarious employment within the agriculture and food sectors, to deliver positive nutrition to communities.

Thoughtful engagement with women and youth (female and male) in an inclusive approach will contribute to sustainable efforts to harness their potential in nutritious food value chains while promoting gender equality. The SBN teams can benefit from guidance on how to tailor their support services to women’s and youth’s specific needs, challenges and realities on the ground— as well as by adding an explicit focus on the much larger cohort of women and youth employees.

Social media

This International Women's Day and beyond, amplify the messaging of our Gender and Nutrition toolkit using the suggested posts here below and our social media graphics.

Social media posts

#DYK Applying a gender lens to #nutrition can deliver a double dividend: accelerating the eradication of malnutrition while advancing gender equity! Why choose 1 when you can have both? Let’s start this #InternationalWomensDay 👉🏾https://express.adobe.com/page/mx5CywHMSndxh/

Women play significant roles in the delivery of good nutrition in their communities and families. Yet today, 60% of those around the world suffering from chronic malnutrition are women and girls. This #IWD2023, let’s #InvestInNutrition and #EmbraceEquity.

Gender inequality is both a cause and effect of malnutrition, hunger and poverty. This #InternationalWomensDay we must #EmbraceEquity and #InvestInNutrition for women and with women. https://express.adobe.com/page/mx5CywHMSndxh/

This #WomensDay, with @UNICEF we’re raising the alarm. More than 1 billion adolescent girls and women around the world suffer from undernutrition, lack of vital nutrients and anaemia. The world must step up to secure good nutrition for women and adolescent girls. https://www.unicef.org/reports/undernourished-overlooked-nutrition-crisis

Social Media Handles

  • @SUN_Movement
  • @UN_Nutrition
  • @SUNCSN
  • @SUNBizNet
  • @womensday

Hashtags

  • #InternationalWomensDay
  • #IWD2023
  • #EmbraceEquity
  • #Nutrition4All

For more information

Credits:

Created with an image by krishna - "Happy women farmers working on farm field in Tamilnadu."