Developing the Women's Empowerment in Nutrition Index in Two States of India

Narayanan, Sudha; Lentz, Erin; Fontana, Marzia; De, Anuradha; Kulkarni, Bharati

doi:10.1016/j.foodpol.2019.101780

Cited by 38 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…These results need to be viewed in light of this study’s limitations. First, the dimensions of empowerment included in the WEAI may not include those directly related to nutrition, unlike the Women’s Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI) ( Narayanan et al 2019 ). Second, the process of aggregation may mask tradeoffs among different dimensions of nutrition, which we have tried to address by analyzing subdomain indicators.…”

Section: Discussion and Policy Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do tradeoffs among dimensions of women’s empowerment and nutrition outcomes exist? Evidence from six countries in Africa and Asia

Quisumbing

Sproule²,

Martínez

et al. 2021

Food Policy

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Highlights We examine linkages between women’s empowerment and nutrition in 6 countries. Women’s empowerment and gender equality are positively associated with child HAZ. Tradeoffs exist between domains of empowerment and women’s nutritional outcomes. Higher workload is associated with more diverse child diets but lower women’s BMI. Women’s empowerment accounts for a small share of the variance in nutrition outcomes.

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Section: Discussion and Policy Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do tradeoffs among dimensions of women’s empowerment and nutrition outcomes exist? Evidence from six countries in Africa and Asia

Quisumbing

Sproule²,

Martínez

et al. 2021

Food Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Together these pathways can help explain the positive associations observed in LMICs between women's empowerment and their own nutritional status [14,16,[25][26][27][28][29], diet [25][26][27][28]30], mental [31] and physical health; and women's empowerment and children's nutrition [13,14,17,32], health, growth [11][12][13][14][15][16]33,34], and development [20]. With respect to caregiver routines and practices, and early learning opportunities, evidence is lacking, but links with women's empowerment are plausible based on the pathways just described.…”

Section: Plos Medicinementioning

confidence: 99%

Associations between women’s empowerment and child development, growth, and nurturing care practices in sub-Saharan Africa: A cross-sectional analysis of demographic and health survey data

et al. 2021

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Background Approximately 40% of children 3 to 4 years of age in low- and middle-income countries have suboptimal development and growth. Women’s empowerment may help provide inputs of nurturing care for early development and growth by building caregiver capacity and family support. We examined the associations between women’s empowerment and child development, growth, early learning, and nutrition in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Methods and findings We pooled data on married women (15 to 49 years) and their children (36 to 59 months) from Demographic and Health Surveys that collected data on child development (2011 to 2018) in 9 SSA countries (N = 21,434): Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo, and Uganda. We constructed a women’s empowerment score using factor analysis and assigned women to country-specific quintile categories. The child outcomes included cognitive, socioemotional, literacy–numeracy, and physical development (Early Childhood Development Index), linear growth (height-for-age Z-score (HAZ) and stunting (HAZ <−2). Early learning outcomes were number of parental stimulation activities (range 0 to 6) and learning resources (range 0 to 4). The nutrition outcome was child dietary diversity score (DDS, range 0 to 7). We assessed the relationship between women’s empowerment and child development, growth, early learning, and nutrition using multivariate generalized linear models. On average, households in our sample were large (8.5 ± 5.7 members) and primarily living in rural areas (71%). Women were 31 ± 6.6 years on average, 54% had no education, and 31% had completed primary education. Children were 47 ± 7 months old and 49% were female. About 23% of children had suboptimal cognitive development, 31% had suboptimal socioemotional development, and 90% had suboptimal literacy–numeracy development. Only 9% of children had suboptimal physical development, but 35% were stunted. Approximately 14% of mothers and 3% of fathers provided ≥4 stimulation activities. Relative to the lowest quintile category, children of women in the highest empowerment quintile category were less likely to have suboptimal cognitive development (relative risk (RR) 0.89; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.80, 0.99), had higher HAZ (mean difference (MD) 0.09; 95% CI 0.02, 0.16), lower risk of stunting (RR 0.93; 95% CI 0.87, 1.00), higher DDS (MD 0.17; 95% CI 0.06, 0.29), had 0.07 (95% CI 0.01, 0.13) additional learning resources, and received 0.16 (95% CI 0.06, 0.25) additional stimulation activities from their mothers and 0.23 (95% CI 0.17 to 0.29) additional activities from their fathers. We found no evidence that women’s empowerment was associated with socioemotional, literacy–numeracy, or physical development. Study limitations include the possibility of reverse causality and suboptimal assessments of the outcomes and exposure. Conclusions Women’s empowerment was positively associated with early child cognitive development, child growth, early learning, and nutrition outcomes in SSA. Efforts to improve child development and growth should consider women’s empowerment as a potential strategy.

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“…Highlighted in Figure 1 are the hypothesized pathways from nutrition knowledge to household nutrition outcomes based on existing literature (green), current analysis (purple) and proposed future research (grey). We have aligned some of these pathways with theongoing and innovative work on Women's Empowerment in Nutrition dimensions, with a focus on knowledge, agency, and resources (Narayanan, Lentz, Fontana, De, & Kulkarni, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Men's nutrition knowledge is important for women's and children's nutrition in Ethiopia

Ambikapathi

Passarelli

Madzorera

et al. 2020

Maternal & Child Nutrition

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In an effort to address undernutrition among women and children in rural areas of low‐income countries, nutrition‐sensitive agriculture (NSA) and behaviour change communication (BCC) projects heavily focus on women as an entry point to effect nutritional outcomes. There is limited evidence on the role of men's contribution in improving household diets. In this Agriculture to Nutrition trial (Clinicaltrials.gov identifier: NCT03152227), we explored associations between men's and women's nutritional knowledge on households', children's and women's dietary diversity. At the midline evaluation conducted in July 2017, FAO's nutrition knowledge questionnaire was administered to male and female partners in 1396 households. There was a high degree of agreement (88%) on knowledge about exclusive breastfeeding between parents; however, only 56–66% of the households had agreement when comparing knowledge of dietary sources of vitamin A or iron. Factor analysis of knowledge dimensions resulted in identifying two domains, namely, ‘dietary’ and ‘vitamin’ knowledge. Dietary knowledge had a larger effect on women's and children's dietary diversities than vitamin knowledge. Men's dietary knowledge had strong positive associations with households' dietary diversity scores (0.24, P value = 0.001), children's dietary diversity (0.19, P value = 0.008) and women's dietary diversity (0.18, P value < 0.001). Distance to markets and men's education levels modified the effects of nutrition knowledge on dietary diversity. While previous NSA and BCC interventions predominantly focused on uptake among women, there is a large gap and strong potential for men’s engagement in improving household nutrition. Interventions that expand the role of men in NSA may synergistically improve household nutrition outcomes.

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Developing the Women's Empowerment in Nutrition Index in Two States of India

Cited by 38 publications

References 22 publications

Do tradeoffs among dimensions of women’s empowerment and nutrition outcomes exist? Evidence from six countries in Africa and Asia

Do tradeoffs among dimensions of women’s empowerment and nutrition outcomes exist? Evidence from six countries in Africa and Asia

Associations between women’s empowerment and child development, growth, and nurturing care practices in sub-Saharan Africa: A cross-sectional analysis of demographic and health survey data

Men's nutrition knowledge is important for women's and children's nutrition in Ethiopia

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