Annual Report of the Hunger Project - 1998

Confronting the Subjugation of Women —
A Key Step in Ending Hunger

Message from Joan Holmes, President of The Hunger Project

As its highest priority for 1998, The Hunger Project began confronting the most pernicious and intractable condition that holds hunger in place. While many of the conditions that keep hunger in place have been transformed, it is increasingly clear that much of the remaining hunger in our world has one major cause — the subjugation of women in the developing world.

It is shocking when one honestly confronts the cradle-to-grave discrimination that women in the developing world face. As children, they are undervalued, fed less, given inadequate health care and denied education. As teenagers, they are forced into early marriage. In extreme cases, girls are bought and sold for prostitution and slave labor.

As wives and mothers, they are undernourished, work backbreaking 16-hour days, and often die in childbirth. Some 585,000 women — one every minute — die each year from pregnancy-related causes. Most of these deaths are preventable.

While women suffer the most from chronic hunger, they also bear nearly all the responsibility for solving the problem. They are responsible for feeding the family, educating the children, providing the health care and earning much of the family income. Yet, by tradition, culture and law, they are denied access to the means, information and freedom of action they need to fulfill their responsibilities.

For the past eight years, in Asia, Africa and Latin America, improving the conditions of life for women has been one of the major focuses of our Strategic Planning-in-Action process. Hundreds of thousands of women now have better nutrition, better health, better education and better income as a result. These initiatives need to be expanded and further strengthened — yet these actions, alone, will not transform the social conditions that give rise to the problem.

In October 1998, following months of research, consultation with activists, and education of our own staff and global constituency, we made a new commitment. We in The Hunger Project commit to speak up — speak out — and break the silence that surrounds this issue.

• We commit to create opportunities for women where none now exist.
• We commit to invest our resources so that women can gain access to resources to improve their lives and the lives of their children.
• We commit to pioneer strategies and take actions that will finally enable women to gain control of their lives and destinies.

As our strategic process of empowerment continued to expand to reach more and more people during 1998, this overarching priority brought focus and urgency to our work. It challenges us to continue to transform ourselves — our own assumptions, attitudes and ways of working — as we work to transform conditions that deny dignity and self-reliance to millions around the world.

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