Households' Food Insecurity and Coping Strategies in the Face of Vulnerability ― A Gender Perspective With Empirical Evidence from Meskan District, Southern Ethiopia

This volume spotlights female heads of households in rural southern Ethiopia. Proceeding from the assumption that unequal gender power relations frame the vulnerability context of female-headed households, leading to greater food insecurity and weaker coping strategies as compared to their male counterparts, Duguma measures the effects of society, the environment, gender, and vulnerability as she aims to gain an improved understanding of their relationship to gender by placing formal and informal institutions and gender power relations at the center of the investigation. Eleven chapters are: introduction; literature review and theoretical considerations; appraisal of the national food security and gender policies in Ethiopia; description of the study area; research methods; demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the study population; vulnerability context and trends; determinants of household food insecurity; coping strategies against livelihood shocks and stresses and the weakening traditional coping mechanisms; external intervention; major findings and policy implications. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation c2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)