Women suffer from food speculation
New report from the World Development Movement
Worldwide 555 million women go hungry – making up sixty per cent of the world’s hungry people. That’s the estimate of the World Development Movement (WDM), who published the statistics on International Women’s Day last week.
WDM said that 315,000 women die in childbirth every year due to a lack of iron.
The organisation drew attention to comments from Indian government food advisor Biraj Patnaik, who said that ‘women often, given the gender inequity in our society, ration their own food so they can feed the children and parents’.
The situation has been exacerbated by the global hike in food prices. They rose by twenty-four per cent between 2010 and 2011.
Several NGOs have drawn attention to the role of financial speculation on food prices by banks and hedge funds. WDM said it is ‘fuelling food price volatility and driving up prices’. They criticised the UK government for blocking attempts by the European Commission to restrict the practice.
