Hungry for Equality: A Longitudinal Analysis of Women’s Legal Rights and Food Security in Developing Countries

Access to food is one of the most basic human needs, yet undernourishment remains one of the greatest barriers to health and development in the Global South. The entitlement approach to hunger maintains that the real issue is not the overall availability of food, but access to it. This paper specifically highlights the access failures of women by focusing on how gender-based stratification limits command over food, even in light of existing food supply. Going beyond traditionally used indicators of gender inequality, we examine how women’s legal rights affect the depth of hunger in developing countries. In a first-time longitudinal study of its kind, we use the 50 Years of Women’s Legal Rights historical dataset from the World Bank to measure changes in women’s property rights and constitutional rights from 1990 to 2010. A two-way fixed effects regression analysis of 42 low- and middle-income nations demonstrates that improving women’s rights is associated with lower levels of hunger over time, even controlling for the food supply, economic development, and other relevant variables.