Food insecurity is the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe
foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire foods in socially acceptable ways. The study
presents a comparison of the principal determinants of individual food insecurity in Europe
and other Continents, with particular regard to gender, since the literature clearly states the
importance of women in the administration of food in the household. The study of gender related diferences in food insecurity is particularly important in Europe, since women
experience food insecurity at a larger extent than men, but with a variability related to the
geographical distribution and with complex relationships with economic and social drivers. Using a large international sample of individual level data, that allows the analysis for
developed Countries for the frst time, and the frst experiential measure of food insecurity
comparable at the global level, the paper analyses the principal determinants of gender differences in food insecurity. In order to verify if women’s vulnerability in food insecurity
is moderated by specifc factors, the modelling approach allows gender to vary by education, poverty, place of residence. The results suggest that the driver that could most mitigate women disadvantage is education: people with a university degree present a lower
probability of experiencing food insecurity, both for men and for women. On the contrary,
familial characteristics, such as the number of children in the household, present a higher
impact on women’s food insecurity than on men’s