"Hunger is the most cruel and concrete sign of poverty," said Pope Benedict XVI to delegates at the World Food Summit in Rome last November.
I agree with him, as the right to adequate food is a basic human right. It is enshrined in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
The right to food, according to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), is not to be interpreted in the narrow sense of being fed, but means access at all times to adequate food and the ability to procure it.
The CESCR also states that food must be adequate in terms of quantity and quality, as well as being culturally acceptable, and the enjoyment of the right to food must not threaten the attainment and satisfaction of other basic needs such as health, housing and education.
Hunger and poverty are two sides of the same coin, and both have a woman's face as they relate to unequal power in gender relations, which still exists at all levels of society, including within families.
How does this unequal power relate to hunger and poverty? Among poor families, when food is limited it is the women who are more likely to give up their right first so that other members of the family can eat.
Within families, men - especially fathers - are often given privileged access to food, while children come second and mothers eat last and least.
An example of such a privilege can be found easily among Indonesian families, in which - regardless of economic status - the father is assigned a special mug that is bigger than that of any other member of the family. This practice implies that fathers are entitled to special treatment and may lead to fathers receiving a higher portion of drinks, including nutritious drinks such as milk. Other practices include giving fathers a bigger piece of meat or chicken.
These practices are often seen as normal and justified under the notion that fathers are the main breadwinners of the family so they deserve this special treatment.
On the other hand, at home women are the ones who bear the main responsibility for food preparation and for ensuring that meals are always available on the dining table. For poor women this may not be a simple task as a family's income may often be inadequate to meet this very basic need.
In the wider community, too, women play a crucial role as food producers. Data from the UNFPA shows that in sub-Saharan Africa, 80 to 90 percent of food is grown and sold by women; in Asia it is 50 to 60 percent, 46 percent in the Caribbean and more than 30 percent in Latin America.
Yet women are often denied access to farming facilities such as credit, fertilizers, training and ownership to land.
Despite the crucial role they play in processing and producing food for their families and communities, they are often denied their right to food. Poverty makes this situation even worse.
The UN estimates that a billion people - one in every six people on the planet - do not get enough to eat. Seven out of 10 of the world's hungry are women and girls.
The Hunger Project, an organization committed to ending world hunger, notes that around the world, millions of poor people eat two or three times a day, but a significant percentage of women eat only once.
These figures match the poverty statistics, as UN data reveals that worldwide, 70 percent of the 1.3 billion people living in absolute poverty are women.
Nilufer Cagatay, as quoted by Ann Whitehead in her article "Failing women, sustaining poverty: Gender in poverty reduction strategy" (2003), writes: "Gender-based power relation means that women experience poverty differently and more forcefully than men do and women are more vulnerable to chronic poverty because of gender inequalities in the distribution of income, access to productive input, such as credit, command over property or control over earned income, as well as gender bias in labor markets."
When women eat inadequately, this causes a negative impact not only on their health, but on that of others in the family. For pregnant and lactating mothers, such an impact directly affects their babies.
Healthy women lead to healthier children and families, and vice versa. Therefore discrimination against women in food distribution must be abolished, and this should start from the family.
Above all, empowering women is an essential part of ending hunger and poverty.
The writer is a lecturer at Parahyangan Catholic University's School of Social and Political Sciences, Bandung.
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