More Than a Holiday Wish: Ending Hunger in America

More Than a Holiday Wish: Ending Hunger in America
12/12/2022 by Abby J. Leibman
All families deserve to be food-secure—not just at the holidays, but every day of the year. It’s time for comprehensive policies to end hunger.


Guests attend a pop-up food bank on Nov. 19, 2022, in Brooklyn, N.Y. (Michael Loccisano / Getty Images for Food Bank For New York City)

For many Americans, the holiday season brings family celebrations, spirituality, culinary indulgences and moments of reflection. The holiday season offers an opportunity for many Americans to give back—amid overflowing tables and holiday meals are familiar scenes of people generously giving their time and resources to local food banks, serving holiday meals to those who lack resources to fill their own tables.

The painful, shameful truth is that widespread hunger persists in America year-round.

13.5 million households—more than 10 percent of Americans—struggle with food insecurity.
Children across the country go to school unable to focus on learning because they lack enough nutritious food.
Nearly 25 percent of Indigenous households struggle with food insecurity.
Hunger is a daily reality for about one-quarter of military families, who are more diverse than ever before and for whom compensation and policies designed for single young men have become inadequate.
A shocking 30 percent of single mothers and their children live in poverty.

In short, hunger in this country remains a national disgrace, and one that is all too FEMALE (emphasis mine) in nature. The “FEMINIZATION (emphasis mine) of poverty” not only persists—it has grown. Women dominate service sector jobs, which are historically undervalued and underpaid. Affordable childcare remains elusive, and the well-intentioned gender neutralizing of these struggles means that our policies fail to meet the unique needs of women and their children. We need the political will of our nation’s leaders to pursue robustly funded national policies that feed the hungry while strategically addressing the systemic social inequities rooted in hunger, including those born of systemic sexism and racism.

. . . .

Sadly, the 1980s reversed that progress. Draconian policies of federal aid cutbacks fueled by racist and sexist welfare queen tropes, the introduction of “work-fare,” low-wage jobs and corporate takeovers of our food and farming industries propelled a rise in those without regular access to nutritious food, particularly female-headed households. Financial crises like the 2008 housing market collapse, and the more recent global pandemic and spiking inflation, have only pushed more people to the brink amid widening income inequality.

.. . . . .


Heading into the holidays, I am confident that if our national leadership acts, we can bridge our nation’s abundance with those who experience the desperation and indignity of hunger. And if our leaders respond to the realities of hunger, they will not only move us toward an end to hunger but also an end to the feminization of poverty. Then all families will be truly food-secure—not just at the holidays, but every day of the year.

https://msmagazine.com/2022/12/12/hunger-holidays-food-bank-congress/