Unheard Voices: Why Women Can't Wait

Courtesy of Concern Worldwide: Over a billion people are going to bed hungry every night. Despite the fact that women produce the majority of food in developing countries, they make up at least 60% of the world's hungry people.

Women play a vital yet unrecognised role in the fight against hunger.

In 2000, 189 world leaders signed up to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and made a promise to ‘end poverty by 2015'. The MDGsareeightgoalsthatsetoutconcrete targets to address extreme poverty - for example MDG 1 commits world leaders to halve the number of people suffering hunger by 2015, and MDG 3 commits to eliminating gender disparity by 2015.

Hunger continues to be the single biggest risk to health worldwide and poses a greater threat than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Today, for the first time in human history, there are over a billion people going to bed hungry every night. The majority of these are women. Despite commitments to improve gender equality, we know that poverty and hunger still have a woman's face.

• Womenaccountformorethan60%ofthe rural labour force
• Womenproduceupto80%ofthefoodin developing countries
• Womenearnonly10%oftheworld'sincome
• Womenownlessthan1%oftheworld'sland and property

Women are largely responsible for growing, buy- ing, selling and cooking food, as well as feeding their children and families, yet women make up 60% of the world's hungry. Why? Because when times are hard, they eat last and least.

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