Gender equality also a factor | World Bank official says women’s role in feeding their families can’t be overlooked
MONTREAL — World Bank nutrition specialist Marie Chantel Messier calls it the south Asian enigma.
The region, which includes India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, has been recording substantial economic growth in recent years, but rates of hunger and malnutrition have not been falling, she told a recent McGill University conference on food stability.
“Before, we thought poor nutrition was all about poverty,” Messier said. “But we see now that thesis is not complete. We recognize there are other factors at play.”
She argued in a later interview that gender equality is a key issue in south Asia.
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“It is as much an issue of power as it is of poverty.”
Women tend to be less educated and have less control of household finances in the region, she said.
“When the woman is more educated or more in control of family finances, increased income tends to be spent more on family needs, on feeding the children,” she said.
“Because of gender inequality in the region, that is not happening and an improvement in the economy does not necessarily make it down to the level of the family and the food on the table.”
Messier said a lack of knowledge and proper hygiene is a significant problem in the region, which contributes to malnutrition and the cost to children.
She said international organizations “are working in the region to convince governments to take this issue of malnutrition more seriously. It inflicts a huge cost on countries.”
Meanwhile, senior U.S. Department of Agriculture official Mark Nord told the conference that hunger and malnutrition don’t just threaten developing countries.
It is also a big problem in the United States, one of the richest countries in the world, he said.
Two-thirds of the USDA budget, $103 billion in 2011, is spent on food assistance programs for Americans such as school lunches and food stamps, he added.
One in four Americans require food assistance, according to the annual USDA food security survey of 45,000 households. That accounts for almost 18 million households.
And while the Canadian food bank lobby will release statistics at the end of October that show an increase in food bank use in Canada, Nord said a comparison of food insecurity in the two countries shows a far better Canadian record.
He suggested it is a result of a better government social safety net in Canada and the medicare program.
“In every age group, the level of food insecurity is lower in Canada than in the U.S.” he said.
Mexican poverty analyst Ricardo Aparicio told the conference that more than 46 percent of Mexicans — an estimated 52 million people — have “some degree of food insecurity.”
