The female face of hunger 1

The Female face of hunger: An ecofeminist reflection on the vulnerable body

(Peracullo, J. In De la Cruz, N.L. & Peracullo, J. [eds.], [2011]. Feminista: Gender, race, and class in the Philippines. Manila:
Anvil Publishing, Inc.)

It is not only in the world of politics that women are marginalized but also in the
discussion of world hunger. The minutest details about hunger and women are often
overlooked.
In this module, different meanings of hunger are introduced. The author, in a
nutshell, presented also the factors that led to global hunger despite increased food
production in other parts of the world. What is missing however in the statistics of world
hunger is the disaggregated data that could point out the worst victims of hunger. Using
ecofeminism as her framework, the author highlighted the biological/physiological, social,
psychological, and ecological dimensions of hunger. Therefore, in reading this material, you
should focus on these dimensions of hunger and view them through the lens of
ecofeminism.
After satisfying your hunger for knowledge through this material, you should be able
to:
a. validate the findings on people’s experiences of hunger by conducting informal
interviews
b. point out new evidences that support the arguments regarding the effects of
hunger

Key Concepts to Understand

dualism ecofeminist perspective of hunger fatty acid theory
food security glucose theory hunger
insulin theory markers as female markers as male
political economy of hunger stomach contraction theory
women’s bodies as cultural markers

Introduction. Traditional responses to the reality of hunger focus on its economic and
sociological causes and implications. Hunger has always been linked with poverty and food
insecurity. Proponents of this view argue that scarcity best describes the state of the world's
food supply. In the Philippines however, agricultural production expanded by 6.61 percent in the
first semester of 2004, with crops and fisheries leading the growth. So, why are Filipino people
hungry? The answer lies not in the availability of food, but rather in the people's capacity (or lack
of it) to access food. Factors that influence access to food involve low wages, inflation,
oppressive taxation and a government policy that prioritizes trade liberalization, the latter
translating into an influx of imported goods that eat into the agricultural sector's share of income.
In other parts of the world, famines grab the headlines, yet famines account for less than
eight percent of hunger-related deaths. The remaining 92 percent are the result of chronic,
persistent hunger - the silent, day-by-day killer that takes the lives of 20,000 people each and
every day. It seems that from these phenomena, we can conclude that hunger will be solved
only if there is enough food for everyone. However, chronic hunger is not an issue of food (Lappe,
1986). Most hungry countries produce more than enough food to feed their own people. The real
culprits of world hunger are free trade policies endorsed by institutions such as the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.' Moreover, for some hunger activists, hunger is not
just an issue of unequal distribution of food supply but primarily a human rights issue. Hunger
occurs when people are systematically denied the opportunity to earn enough money, to
produce enough food, to be educated, to learn the skills to meet their basic needs, and to have
a voice in decisions that affect their lives. But there is another side to hunger which is not
highlighted, as statistics tend to focus on the number of people afflicted by hunger. When we
 The female face of hunger 2

speak of hungry people, we are literally talking about women and children. The vast majority of
the world's poor are women, and the gap between women and men caught in the cycle of
poverty has continued to widen in the past decade.
Hunger is intrusive, painful, and it strikes most deeply into women's understanding of
themselves. In many parts of the world, the Philippines included, women, especially mothers,
are always the last to eat when the family faces starvation or food shortage. It is no surprise that
ill health among women is already evident from studies done by the Food and Nutrition Institute
(FNRI). Anemia, for example, continues to impair 43.9 percent of pregnant women and 42.2
percent of lactating women. Severe anemia among pregnant women is the leading cause of
death during childbirth, as well as low iron in lactating women, which in turn manifests in ill
health in children. Health is ultimately tied to food access and security. Without access to food
because of worsening poverty, mothers suffer and so do entire families that are dependent on
them.
Hunger, from an ecofeminist perspective, exposes the human body as sexed and
gendered; biological yet at the same time social, political, cultural and ecological; material yet
metaphorical and symbolic; a site of varied oppressions yet also a site for liberation. This means
that hunger is foremost a bodily experience but it is also symbolic or metaphorical.
This article is inspired largely by feminist anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes's
reflections on hunger. She claims that it should be grounded on a conceptual framework that
allows for an understanding of the body as individually and collectively experienced, as socially
represented in various symbolic and metaphorical idioms, and as subject to regulation,
discipline and control by larger political and economic processes (1992, p. 21). Yet my paper goes
beyond Scheper-Hughes by positing that hunger as an embodied experience highlights the
reciprocity of the body and the world; and that the vulnerability of our embodiment is precisely
the thread that weaves our embodied experiences together. Reflecting on hunger can be a
foundation for a critical epistemological framework that is developed through listening to the
body in pain.
The Physiology of Hunger. What is hunger? Physiologically, hunger is the set of
internal experiences (sensory signals from receptors, information processing by higher order neuronal circuits, and
command signals) that lead a human or animal to seek food. There are basic needs for nutrients,
water, minerals, vitamins, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Carbohydrates and fats are the
main energy sources for aerobic metabolism. Proteins are tertiary reserves of energy source
during chronic hunger states. They are also the main source of material for muscle
development, synthesis of hormones, neurotransmitters, as well as enzymes necessary for
chemical reactions in our body.
Many early physiological theories of hunger, mentioned briefly below, specifically
focused on the stomach. In 1912, WaIter Bradford Cannon, an American physiologist, proposed
a stomach contraction theory which stated that we know we are hungry when our stomach
contracts. Twenty-five years later, this theory was opposed by the fact that people whose
stomach was removed still felt hungry. Other theories were also forwarded such as the Glucose
theory, which stated that we feel hungry when our blood glucose level is low. Others include the
Insulin theory, which claimed that we feel hungry when our insulin level increases suddenly in
our bodies (Heller & HelIer, 1991). However, this theory seems to indicate that we have to eat to
increase our insulin level in order to feel hungry. Fatty acid theory on the other hand posits that
our bodies have receptors that detect an increase in the level of fatty acid. Activation of the
receptor of fatty acid triggers hunger. These theories are, however, very limited because each
seems isolated; in other words, each theory seems to totally explain the experience of hunger
to the neglect of other factors.
In recent years, hunger as physiological experience has come to be understood as the
interplay among different parts of the body and many factors, and is no longer regarded as an
activity of either the stomach or kidney or fatty acids. The central nervous system becomes the
 The female face of hunger 3

substrate for an integrating mechanism for various inputs and signals (both internal and external); and
is responsible for the outflow of signals associated with hunger and feeding activity, which
includes food-seeking, food-gathering behavior, as well as physiological activities such as
salivary, gastric and intestinal secretions, alongside contractions of smooth muscles of the
alimentary canal. A summary of an integrated neurophysiological model of hunger and feeding
behavior is given below.
Neurophysiology of hunger. There are basic, instinctual drives (hunger, sex) and primary
emotions (such as placidity and rage) which are said to emanate from a part of the central
nervous system known as the limbic system. The limbic system is in turn fed by signals
from sensory systems of the brain receiving visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, olfactory,
various chemical and pain information. The limbic system is also involved in recording,
storing, and retrieving processed information accumulated in the past, later to be played
back to influence present behavior. Based on clinical and anatomical evidence, the
limbic system is also theorized to be under supervision/control by the prefrontal cortex of
the frontal lobe, disease or destruction of which results in disinhibition of the limbic
system. The prefrontal cortex part of the brain modulates the limbic system; that is, the
former is involved in inhibiting, and facilitating, moderately regulating or aggressively
pursuing active transformation of instinctual drives emanating from the latter. Natural
basic instinctual drives such as hunger and sex, which are meant for individual and
species survival, are the enactment of programs housed in neural circuits of the
hypothalamus, parts of which are involved in copulatory behavior, feeding behavior,
rage, placidity, thermal regulation, fight-and-flight emergency responses, and control of
the endocrine system. Destruction of certain parts of the hypothalamus can cause
obesity or anorexia, as well as cause inhibition of sexual desire or can result in
hypersexuality. Specifically, the ventromedial group of neurons in the hypothalamus is
called a satiety center, as it receives chemical signals that tell the brain that an optimum
level of nutrients has been reached to give satisfaction, and influences cessation of
feeding behavior. Another group of neurons in the hypothalamus, the lateral nuclei or
"feeding center" as it is also called, becomes activated as nutrient levels are depressed
below optimum, activating food-seeking and digestive behavior. This "feeding" lateral
hypothalamic nucleus has been suggested to be under regulation by the "satiety center"
housed in the ventromedial nuclei. Hormones partly play a role in the sex drive and
hunger mechanisms. The hypothalamus, as part of the larger limbic system mediates
many of these basic, instinctual drives (or desire). In short, these natural instinctual desires
are played in large part by the hypothalamus (a part of the limbic system) of the brain,
which is under higher cerebral influence.
In chronic hunger, Liz Young, author of World hunger (1997, pp. 21- 22) notes that when the
body has insufficient proteins available to meet all its needs, it reduces maintenance and
prioritizes the most vital functions. So the hair and skin are neglected in favor of maintaining the
heart, lungs and brain tissues. Many of the antibodies are also degraded in the body's attempt
to build the vital organs. This filters a downward spiral because as antibodies are reduced the
body becomes vulnerable to infection; therefore, it becomes susceptible to dysentery, a disease
of the digestive tract. Dysentery causes diarrhea, leading to the rapid loss of nutrients, which
worsens the protein deficiency, which in turn leads to an increase in the probability of a second
or third attack of dysentery. Marasmus, a wasting disease, is another extreme condition
associated with severe under nutrition. When the body does not get enough calories (energy) it
breaks down protein to use as energy, so many children with marasmus have protein-deficiency
problems too. Marasmus may occur in adults or children, but if it occurs within the first two years
of life, brain development is impaired. The symptoms of marasmusare shocking because
children look aged and they lack the normal interest and energy of infants. Children are usually
sick because their resistance to disease and infection is low and their muscles including the
 The female face of hunger 4

heart are wasted. Their metabolism is slow and they have very little fat to keep them warm.
Marasmusis most likely to occur in populations suffering extreme poverty.
The Political Economy of Hunger. In the Philippines, a haunting image of poverty is
that of Mariannet Amper, from Ma-a, Davao City, only 12 years old, who committed suicide on
November 2, 2007. She left behind a diary where she described her family's dismal situation.
Her plight prompted a barrage of reactions from all sectors of society on the real state of hunger
in the country. Indeed, issues on hunger can be compelling, as the 1987 Constitution explicitly
urges the State to "promote a just and dynamic social order that will ensure the prosperity and
independence of the nation and free the people from poverty through policies that provide
adequate social services, promote full employment, a rising standard of living, and an improved
quality of life for all." Hunger has always been regarded as an economic issue because food
touches everything and is the foundation of every economy. In the Philippines, economic
indicators are built around the rise and fall of the price of rice, a staple food in the country.
Foods such as rice, fish (and in recent times, noodles) are subject to political strategies of states and
households. Food sharing creates solidarity while food scarcity damages the human community
and the human spirit.
It is unimaginable to some that in a world where food abounds, a huge number of people
are hungry. Traditional explanations of the cause of hunger in the world revolve around
inadequacies in food production and the inability of some countries to meet the demand of their
populace for food. Hunger is thus identified with food insecurity. Older models of the
economic underpinnings of hunger tended to focus on food insecurity and how to address it. A
country or state is said to face food insecurity when hunger incidents rise. This is in contrast to
the understanding of food security, which simply means the availability, accessibility, and
safety of food for all and at all times. The states' response to food insecurity is to grow or
produce more food. Hunger sets in when there is not enough food to go around.
This particular model fails when confronted with some facts. The Philippines is one of
the leading exporters of agricultural products, yet the nation is regularly assailed by hunger.
Social Weather Station reported in September 2007 through a national survey that hunger in the
country rose to a new record high of 21.5 percent, surpassing the previous record of 19.0
percent in November 2006 and February 2007. The national proportion of 21.5 percent is
equivalent to about 3.8 million families'? On the other hand, the Department of Agriculture
proudly announced on the same year that, in spite of odds, the agricultural sector boasted an
increase of 4.30 percent in the first three quarters of the year," According to analysts, there
seems to be a disparity between these two data. A study of the Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) of the United Nations notes, 'The negative correlation between resource
endowments and GDP growth remains one of the most robust findings in the empirical growth
literature." (Bulte et aI., 2004) In short, the more abundant a nation's natural wealth, the less income
its people make to get themselves out of poverty.
The Madness of Hunger. Feminist anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1992) regards
hunger, especially physiological hunger, as a frightening human affliction. It is frightening
precisely because it grounds/causes all sickness - diseases both of physical and mental - of the
sufferers. Chronic hunger is debilitating, one that is described by the poor in Brazil as Nervoso,
a catchall medical term to name all experiences of deprivation primarily of food and medicine.
For Scheper-Hughes, there is a direct link between this anxiety disorder and hunger. Hunger
and deprivation have set people on edge and have made them lean, irritable, and nervous. This
in turn has results in the way they live their lives--they are free-floating, existentially insecure,
and hopeless.
In an interview with the women of Brazil, Scheper-Hughes makes them describe
Nervoso, which to her is really chronic hunger. But the women make the fine distinction:
The women laughed and shook their heads. "No, you're confused," they offered.
Nervoso is one thing; fome (hunger) is another. Fome is like this: a person arrives at
 The female face of hunger 5

feira almost crazy, with a stomach ache, shaking and nervous, and then she sees spots
and bright lights in front of her eyes and a buzzing in her ears. The next thing she faints
from hunger. Nervoso is something else. It comes from weakness or from worries and
perturbations in the head. You can't sleep your heart pounds, your hands begin to shake
and then your legs. You can have a headache. Finally, your legs get soft. They can't
hold you up anymore, and so you fall over; you pass out. And weakness comes from just
like that, from being poor and weak" (1992, 177).

Scheper-Hughes asks," What does it mean to speak of the primary, the existential,
experience of hunger? "Madness of hunger" offers the starting point (1992, 137). DeJirio de fome
(or madness of hunger) was earlier understood as "protein-calorie" or "protein-energy" malnutrition.
Yet in Scheper-Hughes's research it refers more to the subjective voice of hunger. It is the
hunger of those who eat everyday but of insufficient quantity or of inferior quality, or an
impoverished variety, which leaves them dissatisfied and hungry (1992, p. 137). This kind of hunger
gnaws like an open, festering wound that goes beyond the physical. Its searing pain cuts
through the flesh and into the soul. Not to suggest that flesh is separate from soul, but the pain
is so insistent that it has to be physical. Scheper-Hughes continues that when pushed beyond
endurance, hungry people, who are normally sober and law-abiding, will sack marketplaces,
warehouses and trains during periods of drought (1992, pp. 137-138). Indeed, when one is poor,
hunger is not just hunger for food; it is hunger for a better way of life that can accord one dignity
and honor. We sometimes see how the truly privileged dismiss with impatience some things the
poor could kill for.
Hungering for something is not exactly the same as desiring it. One can dismiss desire
sometimes like it's a nuisance; a mere trifle one can postpone. Hunger is a basic instinctual
drive. It gnaws on the senses and demands satisfaction. For the very poor, hunger give rises to
an almost desperate sense of helplessness that no amount of crying can assuage. Hunger
which is viewed by the poor in Brazil as taboo gives rise to psychological afflictions as well.
Scheper-Hughes describes the extent of hunger's impact to one's body:
The "stigmata" of slow starvation include both physiological and psychological changes.
In addition to weight loss and wasting, edema, and changes in hair texture and skin
pigmentation are the much-noted mood changes: initial depressions followed by
faintness, light headedness, silliness, giddiness, and brilliant flashes of insight, bravado,
often accompanied by irritability. These are often followed by uncontrolled weeping,
fierce, crazy anger; and the lashing out even at those who would be of assistance.
Alternating with the range are passivity and indifference, as if one were absorbed by
some distant or interior reality (1992, p.138).
Women and hunger. The link among food, hunger and eating is economic, political and
engendered This section explores the face of hunger, often hidden by statistics. And if hunger is
shown with a face, often used is that of a child's, easily the most vulnerable in human society.
Images of starving children especially tug at our hearts because they are helpless and because
they did not ask to be born into the world in the first place. Not talked about as much is how
women experience hunger. But a good look at the mothers' situations and circumstances would
reveal more insight to the problem of hunger.
The ability to feed their families is often the basis of women's sense of self. Economist
Penny Van Esterik (1999) posits that the world's food system is engendered and the situation of
women within this system can be construed as violence against them. She notes that the right
to food of women in developing countries is increasingly rendered insecure as evident in their
lack of access to food, whether due to poverty, famine or war and when others take over from
them the right to feed their families. For women who are normally responsible for providing food
for their families, the experience of being unable to feed their children is tantamount to torture
(and food deprivation is a form of torture). Therefore, hunger and food insecurity must be considered part
 The female face of hunger 6

of the violence that women experience; and these must be explored as violations of human
rights." It is women's bodies constructed as repositories and markers of the ethnic, cultural, and
religious boundaries that result in women's greater vulnerability to violence. This vulnerability
also exacerbates gender-based violence (Bong, 2002, p. 123).
The United Nation's World Food Programme notes the real dilemma faced by most
women in the world. The dilemma is that while women are the world's primary food producers,
they are much more affected by hunger and poverty than men. Seven out of 10 of the world's
hungry are women and girls. While around 25 percent of men in developing countries suffer
from anemia caused by iron deficiency, 45 percent of women are affected. Lack of iron means
300 women die during childbirth every day. Moreover, it contends that most often women's work
in rural areas where the world's hungry reside - growing and harvesting crops, preparing, storing
and processing food, managing livestock, and gathering fuel and water supply - are largely
ignored by policy makers. This oversight leads to the failure to the empowerment of women that
can help them gain access to resources, training and finance."
Meanwhile in the Philippines, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ)
reported in 2004 that the situation of Filipino women, as bearers of the brunt of poverty, has
gone from bad to worse with indications that far too many families are now subsiding on "patis"
(fish sauce) for "ulam" (viand) and noodles as substitutes for rice. Women of course survive
on even less. Young (1997, 21) argues that hunger has a female face when she notes that a
variety of social factors have negative implications for women's nutritional status and health,
such as poverty, low social status, discrimination against girls, limited to no family planning
services, restricted access to education, poor primary health provision and early pregnancy.
For example, at different stages in her life, poor women in many developing countries
suffer the effects of chronic hunger. Infant girls born to poorly nourished mothers are low in birth
weight because of growth retardation in the womb; are at greater risk from diarrhea; and are
more likely to suffer from learning difficulties. As teenagers and young women, these children
will continue to have learning difficulties and stunted growth marked by a narrow pelvis and
perhaps delayed menarche. As potential mothers, they are at risk from vitamin and mineral
deficiencies and their attendant health problems, especially now that they would be vulnerable
to anemia. As poorly nourished young mothers, they may suffer anemia, produce less breast
milk and undergo more birth complications, not to mention the risk of bone deformity.
Hunger as an Ecofeminist Issue. Women are essentialized, naturalized, and
condemned by their association with the body (Mellor, 2000, p. 110). Hunger is intimately linked to
food scarcity and malnourishment, making it an ecological issue as well. If the woman is
malnourished because of lack of access to land, in which she can plant and grow food, then her
children will be as equally malnourished as she is. Research presented in the book, Women and
environment in the third world: Alliance for the future (Irene Dankelman and Joan Davidson, 1994, p. xx),
shows that ninety-percent of Third World women depend on land for their survival. They are the
world's farmers - they grow crops, gather firewood, tend to animals, and bring in water. The
principal victims of environmental degradation are the most underprivileged people; and the
majority of these are women. Their problems, and those of the environment, are very much
interrelated. Both are marginalized by existing developmental policies. And because of the
complex cycles of poverty, inappropriate development and environmental degradation, poor
people have been forced into ways of living which induce further destruction.
Moreover, this same research shows how environmental destruction hit women the
hardest. They already suffer from their lowly, unequal position in the household and in the
community and status inferior to that of men. They carry a heavier work burden, and perform
more time - consuming tasks on the land and in the home. They have poorer diet, shabby
working conditions, bad health and inadequate health care. They have little or no control over
cash or land. Yet women are the ones who could make a major contribution to environmental
rehabilitation.
 The female face of hunger 7

Traditional responses to hunger reveal the deep connections between the oppression of
women and the state of the environment. The nature of these connections is primarily
epistemological. The abstract, mechanical, and disembodied thinking that grounds the
development of capitalism and cosmology objectifies both women and nature. This particular
kind of thinking, also understood as dualism, is manifested in the attitude of pitting reason
versus nature.
We can illustrate this in the form of a pyramid, that is, whatever falls on the topside of a
dualism has connections with reason; whatever falls on the bottom side has connections with
nature. Thus such markers as male, white, heterosexual, educated, rich and characteristics
associated with reason such as progress, rationality, order, and development, belong to the
topside. At the bottom, we find such markers as female, people of color, homosexual, illiterate,
poor and characteristics associated with nature such as body, sex, nudity, emotionality, and
chaos. This pyramid also illustrates how dualistic thinking makes a distinction between
rationality and embodiment, advocating an understanding of the self as springing from, yet
wanting to escape, what is perceived as messy and chaotic-i.e. the other. The experience
of hunger and its connection to women and nature reveals the dynamics of dualistic thinking,
which itself is based on a particular ontological view that regard those who belong to the bottom
rung of the ladder as objects and not as subjects.
Hunger Reveals the Vulnerable Body. In everyday life, we are not usually much aware
of our bodies. Only in pain does the body intrude into the consciousness, thereby making its
presence felt. The experience of hunger as physiological pain-insistent, clawing and gnawing-
demonstrates the interaction of bodies and the environment. xxx
In The Mindful Body(1987), Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock propose that a
body in pain communicates. They suggest that illness and pain come into being and are
expressed as a result of interaction between embodied individuals' feelings and thoughts, on the
one hand, and the social relationships and cultural belief systems, on the other hand. "Illness"
is the 'language of the organ'; nature, society, and culture make themselves heard at the same
time (1987, p. 31 in Aalten 2007, p. 112). They explicitly draw attention to their relationship between the
body, its 'owner' and the social and cultural worlds it is part of. To grasp the meaning of pain
and illness, it is not enough to look at the body's presence or absence in the individual's
consciousness. Understanding the "language of the organs" is only possible if the body is
positioned firmly within the cultural symbolism and the context of the social groups it is a part of.
xxx
In hunger, some people fast and will continue to do so as a religious or political activity,
or even for health purposes. They may also forego sex. Various sexual practices abound, from
polygamy to monogamy as well as pornography and prostitution, showing how culture
modulates basic instinctual drives. Primal hunger, equated with pain, can be positive because
pain is a function of survival. Hunger as fasting reveals the transcendent dimension of it.
Transcending hunger is actually regulating desire.
Women’s bodies are often the cultural markers used to regulate desire. If culture
inscribes bodies, it is food that leaves the clearest mark; and that mark is most often read on
women's bodies. For Susan Bordo, anorexia nervosa and bulimia are phenomena, properly
understood as pathological behavior, which emerges as both response and reaction to the
argument that if the body is understood negatively and if the woman is body, then woman is
negativity. They are responses insofar as they uphold the homogenizing cultural representation
of body as hungering and greedy. On the other hand, they are also reactions, or sites of protest
to the above. In their pursuit of slenderness, anorexic and bulimic women can exhibit the control
and independence both denied by the heavy woman's body, which is weighed down by its
seeming dependence on food and care. However, sufferers of anorexia nervosa and bulimia
complain of being hungry all the time; and this feeling of hunger acts as a constant reminder
 The female face of hunger 8

that underneath that show of control is one weak, hungry woman needing nurture and
acceptance.
For Bordo, hunger is represented as an insistent, powerful force with a life of its own.
This construction reflects the physiological reality of dieting: the body is unable to distinguish it
from starvation. The film Flashdance acts as a backdrop to discuss how female hunger as
female sexuality is embodied in attractive female characters. More frequently, however, female
hunger as sexuality is represented by Western culture in misogynist images permeated with
terror and loathing, rather than affection and admiration. In the figure of the man-eater, a
metaphor of the devouring woman, eating reveals its deep psychological underpinnings. Eating
is not really a metaphor for the sexual act. Rather, the sexual act, when initiated and desired by
a woman, is imagined as an act of eating itself. Thus, women's sexual appetites must be
curtailed because they threaten to deplete and consume the body and soul of the male.
The body is perceived as animal, an appetite, a deceiver and a prison of the soul and
confounder of its project. And since the woman is body, then she shares in the metaphors. No
wonder a woman is always weighed down by her body. In contrast, the male body carries a
certain lightness owing to its designation as a pure idea like the One, the all-absolute spirit
Further, these ideologies are cemented by the claim that sexual division of labor is natural and
therefore a justification of the cultural containment of female appetite (read: women are most
glorified by feeding and nourishing the other, not themselves). As a literal activity, of course,
women feed others. What is being asked of women; according to Bordo, is the denial of self
through the feeding of others.

Conclusion
xxx. As it has been the human experience, a rapidly expanding population of hungry
bodies can indeed result in the destruction of the ecological life-support systems contained
within the planetary system, which constitutes part of the bio-geosphere. Hungry bodies have
also become part of petty crime, as well as been rendered tools of warfare of competing elites in
human history, resulting in major wars among communities and nations. These responses only
help to perpetuate a cycle of suffering for human beings in their hungry bodies, with acute
responses serving only as palliatives to the chronic hunger and deprivation which they suffer,
since the systemic causes of hunger are not addressed head on. This we find in most Third
World societies.
Yet there is a way to deal with this seeming impossibility. A way to deal with it is to
regard embodied experience as a foundational epistemological experience. It is listening to the
body in pain, the body that is hungering or hungry. To demonstrate the relationship of pain with
hunger, let us hear from a writer from India who describes hunger in a personal manner:
For hunger is a curious thing: at first it is with you all the time, waking and sleeping and
in your dreams, and your belly cries out insistently, and there is a gnawing and a pain as
if your very vitals were being devoured, and you must stop it at any cost, and you buy a
moment's respite even while you know and fear the sequel. Then the pain is no longer
sharp but dull, and this too is with you always, so that you think of food many times a
day and each time a terrible sickness assails you, and because you know this you try to
avoid the thought, but you cannot, it is with you. Then that too is gone, all pain, all
desire, only a great emptiness is left, like the sky, like a well in drought, and it is now that
the strength drains from your limbs, and you try to rise and you cannot, or to swallow
and your throat is powerless, and both the swallow and the effort of retaining the liquid
tax you to the uttermost."
The body in pain acts as a strand that unites all people-the root of what is truly human.
Hunger as a terrible affliction demands solidarity or compassion. We have shown the dialectic
relationship in and among the body, hunger and nature by inviting the readers to pay attention
to the reciprocity of the body and the world; and that the vulnerability of our embodiment is
 The female face of hunger 9

precisely the thread that weaves our embodied experiences together. It is from this viewpoint
that we can see the significance of reflecting on hunger as an embodied experience because
hunger is something more than a biological phenomenon, with its accompanying psychological,
social and ecological dimensions. The female face of chronic hunger can make us understand
the delicate situation where women suffer from malnutrition and starvation in a society still
dictated by male-dominated power structures in many parts of the world.

Enhancement Activity: Define the following terms:

1. dualism

2. ecofeminist perspective of hunger

3. fatty acid theory

4. food security

5. glucose theory

6. hunger

7. insulin theory

8. markers as female

9. markers as male

10. political economy of hunger

11. stomach contraction theory

12. women’s bodies as cultural markers

If you have time, you can read more about gender and hunger from this link
https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/30315/gender-equality-and-food-security.pdf