Are Women in Rural India Really Consuming a Less Diverse Diet?

Abstract

Background: It is widely considered that women have less diverse diets than other household members. However, it has been challenging to establish this empirically since women’s diet diversity is measured differently from that of other household members. Objective: In this article, we compare women’s dietary diversity with that of their respective households and thereby generate a measure of “dietary gap.” Methods: We measure women’s “dietary gap” by using the difference of homogenized household and woman dietary scores (using the same scales). This is done using primary data on 3600 households from 4 districts in India. Additionally, we show the robustness of our results to variations in scale and recall periods used to construct the diet diversity scores. Results: Mean difference tests indicate that women consistently consume 0.1 to 0.5 fewer food groups relative to other household members, with the results being statistically significant at the 1% level. The food groups driving this dietary gap are nonstaples like Vitamin A-rich fruits and vegetables, meat/fish/poultry, and dairy. Conclusions: Results point toward the discrimination faced by women in the variety of the food consumed, the importance of considering comparability in creating indices of diet diversity, and the need to collect more detailed information on diets. To our knowledge, this is one of the first studies to examine dietary discrimination faced by women using common scales.

Impact of Crop Diversity on Dietary Diversity Among Farmers in India During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…We are also unable to comment on on gender disparities in dietary diversity within farming households. It is plausible that the lockdown impacted women's dietary diversity more severely because of prevailing gender norms around distribution of food among household members (Gupta et al, 2020b). Despite these limitations, this study was strengthened by its longitudinal design and novelty-being one of the first studies to evaluate this association in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in a country where a large proportion of the world's malnourished live.…”

Dietary diversity practice and its influencing factors among pregnant women in Afar region of Ethiopia: mixed method study

“…Recognizing pregnant women's dietary diversity practices is critical for promoting maternal nutrition, health, and child development [ 4 , 5 ]. Dietary diversity is affected by a variety of internal and external risk factors [ 7 ]. There is no study on the dietary diversity among pregnant women in the Afar region of Ethiopia.…”

“…Exogenous household shocks and intra-household food allocation decisions have a negative impact on women's diets. Women's diets in rural India are less diverse than those of the rest of the family [ 7 ]. Thirty-seven percent of pregnant women in South Africa and a comparable 37% of pregnant women in Eastern Nigeria practiced dietary taboos, such as not eating meat and egg, are due to cultural beliefs linked with the presumption of difficulty in delivering [ 8 , 9 ].…”

Minimum dietary diversity and associated factors among lactating mothers in Haryana, India: a community based cross-sectional study

“…To the best of knowledge, this is the first study from the selected study site. In another Indian study, 61.5% of the Indian women in a study by Soumya et al on MDD were below the average dietary diversity score of 4.3 [ 31 ]. A similar type of studies were conducted in neighboring countries of Nepal [ 26 ] and Pakistan [ 30 ] and found 46.5 and 20% dietary diversity among lactating women, respectively, which are much lower than our estimates.…”