Access to good nutrition is a basic human right and a fundamental component of human dignity. Yet women and girls are twice as likely to suffer from malnutrition as men and boys, due to a combination of biological, social and cultural reasons.

When women and girls are empowered to claim their rights, it leads to improved health and nutrition for themselves and a better quality of life for their families and communities.

But achieving gender equality will not be possible as long as women and girls suffer from malnutrition at a much higher rate than men and boys.

Through programs and interventions that specifically target women, adolescent girls, and pregnant women, we help ensure they have access to improved nutrition.

Some of the interventions that reach women and girls include:

• Iron and folic acid supplementation for pregnant women
• Nutrition education and weekly iron and folic acid supplementation for adolescent girls
• Food fortification and salt iodization, which reach all populations with critical micronutrients like iron and iodine
• Partnerships with non-nutrition organizations including UNFPA, Girl Effect and the University of Saskatchewan to leverage existing platforms to improve nutrition for women and girls

Our Program Gender Equality Strategy ensures that all our programs promote gender equality, women’s empowerment and improved nutrition.

Grounded in the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, Global Nutrition Targets 2025, and global efforts to promote gender equality, we mainstream gender equality in a phased approach by:

• Providing capacity building and organization-wide gender equality training for staff
• Enhancing technical advice and quality assurance in gender analysis to inform the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of gender-sensitive and responsive programs
• Reporting on gender-sensitive outcomes to track their progress and to serve as a model for other nutrition programs
• Reviewing progress on an annual basis to guide how Nutrition International will continue to strengthen capacity to promote gender equality and to set the groundwork for the next stages of gender mainstreaming

Gender mainstreaming is an approach that considers social and economic differences between men and women to ensure that proposed policies and programs have intended and fair results for women and men, girls and boys, and considers how actions contribute to gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Our implementation priorities for gender mainstreaming include:

• Supporting deeper consideration of gender equality into all aspects of our programs
• Strengthening capacity to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment
• Designing and delivering gender-sensitive nutrition programming at scale
• Delivering on gender-sensitive outcomes
• Measuring and tracking knowledge, attitudes and practices related to gender equality
• Tracking equitable participation in training and capacity building
• Analysing gender as part of continuous learning
• Filling gender data gaps
• Encouraging equitable participation
• Advocating for the importance of improving children’s, adolescent girls’ and women’s nutrition to advance gender equality