10 Facts About Women In The World

— Photo © WFP/Diego Fernandez

Happy International Women's Day! Gender equality is a crucial step towards zero hunger. Make a start and share these important facts today.

1) A WFP study in 32 African countries found that the enrolment of girls jumped by nearly 30 percent after the first year of school-meals programmes in their schools.

2) The number of hungry people in the world could be reduced by anything from 100 million to 150 million people if the gender gap in agriculture was closed by giving women farmers more resources. [FAO]

3) Many rural women spend up to four hours a day collecting fuel for household use, sometimes travelling 5 to 10 kilometres a day. [IFAD]

4) In developing countries in Africa, and Asia and the Pacific, women typically work 12 to 13 hours per week more than men. [IFAD]

5) More than 260,000 women have been trained under WFP’s Purchase for Progress (P4P) initiative that connects smallholder farmers to markets.

6) Globally, women’s earnings are 24 percent less than men’s. [UN Women]

7) If all pregnant women had access to all of the nutrition they needed, over 800,000 infant deaths could be averted every year. [ONE]

8) Studies by the World Bank show that providing girls with one extra year of primary school boosts their eventual wages by 10-20 percent. An extra year of secondary school boosts that earning power by 15 to 25 percent.

9) Less than 40 percent of countries provide girls and boys with equal access to education. Only 39 percent of countries have equal proportions of boys and girls enrolled in secondary education. [UNESCO]

10) In Afghanistan, women remain severely under-represented in the legal system: only 19.3 percent of lawyers and just 8.4 percent of judges are women. [IDLO]

Learn more about hunger and malnutrition from WFP's comprehensive list of Facts About Hunger and Malnutrition.