Empowering women enhances family nutrition

The way to a man's heart may be through his stomach, but the way to ensure a well-nourished family is through empowering the woman. A recent study on particularly vulnerable tribal groups of Odisha quantifies the improvement that comes with women empowerment, showing that even a small effort goes a long way in ensuring dietary diversity on the dinner plate and is crucial to reducing malnourishment and child wasting (a child with very low weight for her height).

The study (bit.ly/power-platter) assesses the impact of intervention work done by the Odisha government and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) on these vulnerable populations, which are among the most isolated and malnourished groups in India, and traditionally consume less of fruits and vegetables. The initiatives include giving them access to water and high-yielding crop seeds, and teaching them to augment income with activities like bee-keeping, says Swamikannu Nedumaran, an agricultural economist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Hyderabad, and co-author of the study.  

The study is based on two sets of data collection – at the beginning of the programme in 2017, and a mid-term assessment in 2021 – covering 1,900 households across 12 districts. It uses five domains of decision-making, namely agricultural input, sales, income, food purchase and others (like access to collectives), to form the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), and assess its impact on household dietary diversity and child anthropometry.

The study shows that a 10 percentage point increase in the empowerment index reduced the chances of a child being underweight by 3.9 and wasted by 5.6 percentage points. It also assessed the various domains of empowerment and shows that the best family nutrition outcomes happen when a woman has greater decision-making power over cash income decisions. The value of food consumed by the household can improve from 33% to 113%, depending on the level of empowerment bringing in a greater variety of fruits and vegetables.

"The findings are in line with our understanding that in India, in resource-constrained settings, if a woman is empowered to make decisions, these are in favour of family health. The male's decision-making is geared towards improving monetary benefits," says Bharati Kulkarni, Head of the Reproductive and Child Health and Nutrition division of the Indian Council of Medical Research. "The Asian Enigma (unexplained malnutrition and stunting despite food availability) is also due to the low status of women. Programmes which empower women will have favourable impacts on family health," Kulkarni says.