COVID-19′s Impact on American Women’s Food Insecurity Foreshadows Vulnerabilities to Climate Change

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc on human lives and the global economy, laying bare existing inequities, and galvanizing large numbers to call for change. Women are feeling the effects of this crisis more than others. This paper explores the pre-COVID relationships and amplified negative feedback loops between American women’s economic insecurity, lack of safety, and food insecurity. We then examine how COVID-19 is interacting with these intersecting risks and demonstrate how climate change will likely similarly intensify these feedback loops. The COVID-19 pandemic may be revealing vulnerabilities that societies will face in the wake of an increasingly warming world. It is also an opportunity to build resilience, inclusiveness, and equity into our future, and can help inform how to include gender equity in both COVID-19 and climate recovery policies. Finally, we identify possible strategies to build resilience, specifically highlighting that gendered economic empowerment may create a buffer against environmental health hazards and discuss how these strategies could be integrated into a women-centered Green New Deal.