Women and World Hunger:
The Crisis Hidden in Plain Sight

The UN's State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025 report found that 673 million people faced hunger in 2024. It also found — with no ambiguity — that food insecurity was higher among women than men in every region of the world. This is not a new finding. It has been documented consistently for at least three decades. And yet development funding, agricultural policy, and food systems continue to be designed in ways that disadvantage women farmers, restrict their access to productive resources, and leave them eating last and least within their own households.

Women account for nearly half the agricultural labour force in developing countries. In Sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia, they produce 60–80% of the food consumed at the household level. They are the primary food producers, the primary caregivers, and the people most responsible for ensuring that children eat. And they are, systematically and consistently, the people most likely to go hungry themselves.

Why Women Go Hungry

The mechanisms are not mysterious. Women farmers have significantly less access than men to the productive resources that determine whether farming is viable:

• Land: Less than 1 in 5 landowners worldwide are women. In parts of Sub-Saharan Africa the figure falls below 5%. Without land ownership, women cannot use land as collateral for credit, cannot invest in soil improvement, and can have their plots repossessed by male relatives when a husband dies or leaves.
• Credit: Women are systematically excluded from formal credit markets — either by legal restrictions, lack of collateral, or discriminatory lending practices. Without credit, there is no investment in better seeds, fertiliser, irrigation, or equipment.
• Inputs and technology: Women are less likely to have access to improved seeds, agricultural extension services, or labour-saving technology. They are more likely to farm with hand tools on smaller plots.
• Markets: Women have less access to market information, transportation, and storage — making it harder to sell surplus at fair prices.
• Time: Women do 2.6 times more unpaid care and domestic work than men. This unpaid labour — cooking, childcare, water collection, elder care — consumes time that could otherwise be invested in farming or income generation.

Within the household, these disadvantages compound into a pattern that food security researchers call "eating last and least": women prioritise feeding children and male household members first, and consume less and lower-quality food themselves. This drives not only hunger but chronic nutritional deficiencies — particularly iron-deficiency anaemia — that affect women's health, productivity, and their ability to carry pregnancies to term safely.

The Solution Is Not Complicated

The evidence on what would work is extensive and consistent. If women farmers had equal access to land, credit, seeds, and technology:

• Global agricultural output could increase by 2.5–4%
• The number of hungry people could fall by 100–150 million
• Global GDP could rise by approximately $1 trillion
• Food insecurity for around 45 million people could be eliminated

Women reinvest 90% of their income back into their families and communities — compared to 30–40% for men. Investing in women's economic empowerment is not just a gender equality imperative. It is the highest-return development investment available.

What is missing is not knowledge. It is political will — and funding. See our full analysis on women and global poverty and the food security page for the policy levers available.