Women as victims and resolvers of hunger.

• Author: Santos, Ana Paula dos
• Position: Guest Column - Angola - Brief Article - Column

Women, especially in the Angolan society, are one of the main victims of hunger, not only because they constitute the majority of the population, but also due to the special circumstances in which their society finds itself as a result of the direct and indirect consequences of war, whose main victims are the most vulnerable groups.

They are part of these groups because of their position in the social fabric, in which they play the roles of mother, educator, head of the family and as the main source of sustenance--a situation that is frequently aggravated by a state of widowhood, apart from being the main working force in a country where the economic and social structures have been destroyed or seriously damaged by war, and its agricultural fields are mined by the rebels who carry out terrorist acts with the aim of destabilizing the country.

The war--the main cause of hunger--attacks mainly the displaced populations, who in a short span of time found themselves deprived of self-sustenance and the ability to continue to participate regularly in the productive process. This situation led to the destruction of the social fabric and the agglomeration of populations in the peripheral areas in precarious situations of unemployment, insalubrity and needs of various kinds. The consequent lack of sources of revenue results in their dependence on donations as a means of survival.

Hunger is an expression of extreme poverty, and the Angolan Government is saving no efforts to satisfy the population's basic needs, despite the many other problems they face, with the objective of avoiding their exclusion and encouraging their reintegration in normal social life. In such circumstances, women are part of the problem and also of the solution, because as victims of the economic, social, conjunctural and structural phenomenon of hunger, they also constitute, when capacitated, an active factor in the eradication of hunger and in the development and prosperity of themselves and the society.

If we understood that the development of any society includes the economic advancement of women, we would understand that the eradication of poverty necessarily should include capacity-building in production and, consequently, the increase of revenues for women. In this perspective...