Case of Famine Monitoring-A Gender Perspective

Governments of famine-prone countries employ certain socio-economic indicators, with the household as the unit of enumeration, in order to monitor famines with a view to alleviating their impact. This paper points to the economistic and gender-insentive basis of such thinking and argues for a more gender-focused approach which while retaining the household as the basic unit of analysis comprehends the relative position of women to men within the household and society at large.