The color and gender of hunger: analysis of food insecurity from an intersectional gaze

Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyze home food (in) security via intersectionality. The data are from the cross-sectional study Quality of the Urban Environment of Salvador – QUALISalvador, conducted from 2018 to 2020 in Salvador, Bahia State, Brazil. A structured questionnaire and the Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale were used. A total of 14,713 households were analyzed. The outcome variable was the situation of food security: mild, moderate, or severe food insecurity. The exposure of interest variable was the intersection of the variables self-declared race/color and gender: white man, white woman, black man, black woman. Multinominal logistic regression models were used to estimate the association between exposure of interest and outcome, adjusted for socioeconomic variables and stratified according to education level and per capita family income. Households lead by black women had a higher chance of experiencing mild (OR = 1.39; 95%CI: 1.15-1.68; p = 0.001) and moderate or severe (OR = 1.94; 95%CI: 1.49-2.52; p < 0.001) food insecurity in relation to households lead by white men. They also had a higher chance of experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity in all levels of education and in the ranges of up to 1/2 minimum wage and > 1 minimum wage. When the person responsible for the household was a black man, the greatest chance for this condition was in the > 1 minimum wage. Food insecurity in households lead by black women, even in socioeconomically favorable conditions, is revealed as one of the consequences of the structural interaction of racism and sexism.