Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture: What Role for Food and Nutrition Security in Bangladesh?

Esha Sraboni Hazel Malapit Agnes Quisumbing Akhter Ahmed

Workshop on Evidence-Based Policy Options For Food And Nutrition Securityin Bangladesh

1 October 2014, Dhaka

Introduction

Achieving gender equity and empowering women is a goal in itself (UN MDG 3). Would women’s empowerment also lead to improved food and nutrition security outcomes?

We use a new measure of empowerment to examine the relationship between women’s empowerment in agriculture and

• Household dietary diversity• Maternal dietary diversity• Child dietary diversity

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI)

Survey-based index designed to measure empowerment and inclusion of women in the agricultural sector– Collaboration between USAID, IFPRI and the Oxford Poverty and Human

Development Initiative – Designed initially as tool to monitor US government’s Feed the Future

interventions– Broadly applicable as a diagnostic tool to identify potential areas for policy

intervention

WEAI is made up of two sub indices– Five domains of empowerment (5DE)– Gender parity index (GPI)– All range from zero to one (higher values mean greater empowerment)

A woman’s empowerment score shows her own achievements

Data

IFPRI’s Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey (BIHS) 2011-2012; nationally representative of rural Bangladesh

Final estimation sample: 3,273 farm households

Household-level data on weekly food acquisition used to construct household dietary diversity measure

Individual level data on food consumption based on 24-hour recall used to construct maternal and child dietary diversity measures

WEAI survey data used to construct individual empowerment scores for primary males and females in households

Food and nutrition outcomes examined

Diet diversity scores

Household-level– 12 food groupsMaternal– 9 food groupsChild- 7 food groups

Empowerment measures

Empowerment score of primary female (overall empowerment in the five domains)

Gender parity gap (=0 if have gender parity) Leadership domain:

– Number of groups in which she is an active member Resources domain:

– Average number of credit decisions she participates in solely/jointly

– Number of assets she has sole/joint ownership of– Number of decisions over purchase/sale/transfer of assets

she participates in solely/jointly

Other control variables

Household characteristics Individual characteristics for child and motherPrice of riceProduction diversity: Number of food crops produced by

household

Method of impact estimation– Instrumental variables regression

Results

Impacts on weekly household dietary diversity (number of food groups)

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

1.91.7

0.9

0.20.01

-2.6

Gender par-ity gap

Impact on child dietary diversity (number of food groups)

Impact on maternal dietary diversity (number of food groups)

Empowerment score0

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

0.35

0.4

0.45

0.5

0.44

Empowerment score0.00

0.05

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25

0.30

0.35

0.40

0.45

0.50

0.38

Summary of key results Overall women’s empowerment score, the number of groups in which

women actively participate, women’s control of assets and ability to take decisions regarding credit, reduction of empowerment gap between men and women in the same household have a positive impact on household dietary diversity

Women’s empowerment has a positive impact on maternal and child dietary diversity

Increasing crop production diversity contributes to improved household and child dietary diversity

A woman’s education is important for her and her child’s dietary diversity

Conclusions

Policy implications Strengthen women’s access to land and resources, including:

– Livestock– Farm equipment– Credit (from both banks and NGOs)

Strengthen women’s control over land and resource use. – Evaluation of BRAC’s Targeting the Ultra-Poor Program demonstrates

that access to resources does not necessarily mean control of resources or decision-making authority over use

Increase community leadership opportunities for women in:– Group-based programs through NGOs– Local government

Policy implications

Include men in the process and programs to empower women

Increase women’s educational attainment

Need to diversify crop production in this predominantly rice-based economy

More information available at

WEAI RESOURCE CENTERhttp://www.ifpri.org/book9075/ourwork/program/weai-resource-center