Interview with Vilma Tyler, Senior Advisor for Nutrition (for School Age Children, Adolescents and Women) at UNICEF in New York. Vilma is leading UNICEF’s work on the prevention of all forms of malnutrition, including micronutrient deficiencies and anemia as well as overweight and obesity, through policy and programming on school health and nutrition in education systems and nutrition integration into antenatal care systems. She has 25 years of experience in humanitarian and development programming and she supported several countries during major nutrition emergencies as part of her previous work for UNICEF. In the run-up to the N4G Summit, Vilma has been appointed as the co-lead of the gender working group which will have a central role in framing discussions around gender at the summit.
1. How are the fight against malnutrition and the fight for women’s rights interconnected?
First, a woman has a right to nutrition like any other human being. At UNICEF in the past few years, we have focused on pregnant and breastfeeding women, but by doing this we have missed the opportunity to address women’s nutrition as it affects them directly. The recent UNICEF’s flagship report “Undernourished and Overlooked: The global nutrition crisis for adolescent girls and women”, launched in 2023 shows that there is more than one billion adolescent girls and women suffer from undernutrition (including underweight and short height), deficiencies in essential micronutrients and anemia, with devastating consequences for their lives and wellbeing.
The report also highlights the fact that poor nutrition is passed down through generations. Maternal underweight, maternal short height and low birthweight are consistent predictors of stunting and wasting in early childhood. By opposition, the ripple effects of nourishing girls and women are significant. We know that children born to mothers with good nutrition are more likely to live healthy and fulfilling lives themselves, meaning that investments in women’s and girls’ nutrition are an investment in the children of tomorrow.
What we see is that malnutrition among women and girls actually amplifies gender inequalities. Though the links between gender equality and nutrition are clear, action has been relatively small and fragmented until now because of a lack of practical guidance on how to invest in this double dividend.
Malnutrition actually lowers women’s learning and earning potential and other opportunities in life, it weakens their immunity to infections and increases the risk of many life-threatening complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Gender inequalities limit girls’ access to education, nutritious food, and essential services. As a result, we see in many countries malnourished girls who tend to drop out of school and earn less than their well-nourished peers. In some countries, malnutrition in adolescents is also mainly associated with early marriages and pregnancies.
This becomes what we call an intergenerational cycle of gender inequality and malnutrition, which begins at the birth of the girl and continues throughout the life course and across generations.
2. How can we break this cycle of gender inequality and malnutrition?
To tackle gender equality, we need to make nutritious, safe and affordable diets and health and nutrition services, available and accessible to the women just like they are accessible to their male counterparts. Gender equality enables the creation of an environment where women and girls have access to safe, affordable and nutritious diets as well as high quality services, and have the agency to make positive nutrition related decisions.
In the country of Bangladesh for example, there is very high malnutrition among women and young adolescent girls. Unless a woman becomes pregnant, or unless a girl gets sick, they do not seek healthcare for routine checkups. With funding and technical support from UNICEF, the government of Bangladesh has decided to go where the women are and bring the services closer to them. They have established health clinics within the factories so women can seek care during their pregnancy and be monitored to make sure that they are receiving adequate antenatal care services, which include weight monitoring, nutrition counseling on nutritious diets, and provision of multiple micronutrient supplements, for anemia prevention. Such services are essential to ensure a healthy pregnancy and improve birth outcomes. They also established daycare centers within factories to care for their children as well as breastfeeding corners. What can be observed is that with free meals, free healthcare, and free daycare, the return on investment was very important.
This is just one example of many that we can provide about how looking at this gender issue really makes a difference.
3. In your opinion, what is missing to meet these challenges?
Malnutrition is quite complex and needs everyone and all sectors to contribute. We need to better understand the issues that are burdening women and preventing them from accessing nutritious diets, services and care and what is the enabling environment contributing to that, whether it’s policies, power relationships or gender norms.
When we talk about anemia for instance, in South Asia, West and Central Africa, and East and southern Africa, about 60% of women are anemic. We need to really understand what causes this situation and thus invest in data to better understand how we can empower women and girls across their life course. I think when we talk about gender equality, we need to really be serious about it, understand what the issues are because they are all context specific. In some countries, women and mothers often are the last to eat and eat the least amount of food.
Early marriages and pregnancies and gender-based violence also contribute to this cycle of malnutrition. I was recently in Nairobi where early marriage is highly prevalent, further contributing to gender inequality and malnutrition. Adolescent girls provide sexual favors in return for money to purchase menstrual hygiene products. Such practices put them at risk of HIV Aids and early pregnancy. Fearing stigma, when they become pregnant, they avoid seeking antenatal care and often drop out of school. This puts them at risk of pregnancy complications and malnutrition, further depriving them of learning opportunities and better work opportunities in the future. Therefore, it is really important to understand what are the gender related issues impacting and gender norms impacting women’s nutrition. Addressing both will result in a double dividend.
4. Work has slowly begun on the N4G 2025 and will continue notably through thematic working groups. How are you approaching the launch of this work? What do you intend to bring to this group, and for what objectives?
With UNICEF we can bring the data and the evidence as well as the voices of women from the ground. We need to make sure that women continue to have access to resources, that they have agency and decision-making power. We need to ensure that we are addressing the laws, the policies, the systems and the services that are impacting them. With UNICEF we will be the voice of women and children. We are also taking a closer gender perspective to make sure that everything we do is supporting women’s agency and is empowering them to access improved nutrition.
We are bringing some high-level government officials who have already made commitments into this conversation so they can call on others to join. The UN General Assembly will be a first step where we are hoping to get commitments. And we are working very closely with a number of governments so that they can lead on this issue but also with other champions like women celebrities and others who can speak and be the voice of these vulnerable women.
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