“Half the sky belongs to women,” as the saying goes. Yet they own only one-eighth of the fertile land—in Germany, as little as one-twelfth. [42] When it comes to tilling the fields, however, women are particularly prominent where the work is done by hand. [43] The United Nations reports that women account for 38 percent of agricultural labor worldwide. [44] That is just the tip of the iceberg. Care work and subsistence work must be added to this. On top of that comes everything that is counted as “housework”: carrying water and wood, processing, preserving, and cooking food. In fact, women perform well over half of the work that feeds humanity and, moreover, invest far more reliably than men in the household (nutrition, health, education) and in their children’s future.
Men lead in other areas: In Germany, they eat twice as much meat as women and drink three times as much alcohol. [45] In many poorer regions of the world, the man often eats first, followed by the children, then the woman—especially in times of crisis. That is why significantly more women than men suffer from hunger and malnutrition. [44] If women—especially in rural areas—had the same rights and opportunities as men and were better protected from men’s violence, there would be far less hunger and malnutrition in the world.
Women's food security is consistently rated lower than that of men. [46]
