Hunger and Gender
In both developing and advanced countries, both mothers and fathers will sometimes go without eating so their children can avoid hunger. But women seem to be more likely to make this sacrifice than men. Studies by World Bank have consistently found that about 60% of those experiencing hunger are female. The explanation for this disproportionate suffering appears to be that compared to men, women will more often forgo meals in order to feed their children. In older sources this was sometimes said to be a phenomena unique to developing countries, due to greater sexual inequality. More recent findings have suggested that mothers will also often miss meals even in advanced economies. For example, a 2012 study undertook by Netmums in the UK found that one in five mothers would sometimes miss out on food so as to be able to save their children from going hungry.
Read more about this topic: Hunger
Famous quotes containing the words hunger and/or gender:
“What a hell of an economic system! Some are replete with everything while others, whose stomachs are no less demanding, whose hunger is just as recurrent, have nothing to bite on. The worst of it is the constrained posture need puts you in. The needy man does not walk like the rest; he skips, slithers, twists, crawls.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
“Most women of [the WW II] generation have but one image of good motherhood—the one their mothers embodied. . . . Anything done “for the sake of the children” justified, even ennobled the mother’s role. Motherhood was tantamount to martyrdom during that unique era when children were gods. Those who appeared to put their own needs first were castigated and shunned—the ultimate damnation for a gender trained to be wholly dependent on the acceptance and praise of others.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)