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Previous research assumes that economic development is the key to increasing the food supply and alleviating child malnutrition. However, economic development alone does not promise that income is distributed fairly, nor does it guarantee that other human needs will be fulfilled. What has been missing from cross-national research is an analysis of how gender inequality shapes women’s abilities to effectively maintain food security. The current study contributes to this literature by exploring the multidimensional effects of women’s empowerment on child stunting and wasting.

Pooling data from the Demographic and Health Surveys and the World Bank, the analysis estimates a series of multi-level models that examine the country-level influences on malnutrition, while also accounting for household and maternal characteristics that affect food security at the individual level.

Results suggest that improvements in women’s education, control over reproduction, representation in national politics, and life expectancy correspond to improvements in child malnutrition. Notably, the effects of gender inequality are comparable to or larger than those of economic development. The multi-level modeling technique illustrates how social forces that are larger than the individual shape the chances of experiencing food insecurity.

Cross-national data are limited in scope and cannot prove causality. Further research is also needed to better understand the process by which women wield advances in rights and empowerment to affect food security.

If policymakers want to facilitate food security in poor countries, they should not disregard the potential of policies that will promote more equitable rights for women.

Although women remain substantially underrepresented in the top echelons of large corporations, a non‐trivial presence of female executives has emerged in recent years. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the firm characteristics that predict the sex of the executive office holder, classifying the plausible firm characteristics that could explain the presence of female executives into four explanations: sector, size, stability, and scandal.

This paper provides perhaps the first large‐sample analyses of the sex of executive officers in Fortune 500 firms by analyzing a sample of 3,691 executives in 444 Fortune 500 companies.

In the paper's sample, 252 of the executives, or 6.4 percent of the sample, are women. The authors' analyses reveal that women are less likely to be chief executive officers and chief operations officers, but more likely to be chief corporate officers and general counsels. Female executives are somewhat less likely to be present in the construction sector, but there is evidence that they are more likely to be present in retail trade. Firms with greater assets and sales growth are less likely to have female executives. Using originally collected data, it is shown that firms that have experienced a scandal in recent years are more likely to have female executives. However, the nature and quantity of scandals do not have significant effects.

Ultimately, the authors' analyses reveal that key firm characteristics predict whether an executive office is held by a woman.

This introduction provides an overview of the themes and chapters of this volume.

The chapters present original qualitative and quantitative research illustrating the complex relationship between gender and food. The need to understand the relationship intersectionally and in historical context is apparent and provisioning as caring emerges as a major theme.

Food is a human right yet it is not always and everywhere available and when it is not always humanly produced and healthful. The fact that food production and consumption is gendered cannot be ignored in the quest for feeding our planet.

The chapter and the volume are intended to illustrate some of the many ways that food and gender are related and to encourage gender scholars to continue to pay attention to food research.