Women’s empowerment and their experience to food security in rural Bangladesh

Abstract

Global discourses have advocated women's empowerment as a means to reduce their own's food insecurity, which is also key development challenges in Bangladesh. However, little empirical research has conducted on this issue, especially in the rural area of Bangladesh. Therefore, the present study was conducted to examine the relationship of six domains of women's empowerment with their food security in rural Bangladesh using a partial least square structural equation modelling approach. Our empirical analysis indicates that women's accesses to their legal and familial rights and decision‐making roles in households increase their bargaining power over the utilization of resources and to choices of food which significantly and negatively decrease their food insecurity. Moreover, information and communication technologies and infrastructure facilities also negatively and significantly associated with women's food insecurity. However, women's leadership has a negative but not significant effect on their food insecurity, as low self‐esteem rural women feel no ease in publicly addressing their inequalities. By understanding family composition from women's perceptions, the results from our research can assist policymakers to develop more suitable strategies to enhance the empowerment status of rural women and reduce their food insecurity.

The Influence of Women’s Empowerment on Poverty Reduction in the Rural Areas of Bangladesh: Focus on Health, Education and Living Standard

“…Achieving gender equality is regarded as one of the key goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as women and girls continue to suffer serious discrimination problems in every part of the world [ 1 ]. The vital aspect of the goal of women’s empowerment is connected to improving health and nutrition status, ensuring food security, eliminating hunger, and reducing poverty [ 2 , 3 ]. “Poverty is a pronounced deprivation of well-being”, whereas well-being is measured by education, assets, housing, health, nutrition, and certain human rights in society [ 4 ].…”

Women's agency in nutrition in the association between women's empowerment in agriculture and food security: A case study from Uganda

“…To elaborate, in studying the association between the indicators of empowerment and food security, findings often indicate trade‐offs (Aziz et al, 2020; Wei et al, 2021); that is, empowerment does not necessarily affect food security, or other nutrition outcomes, positively for women (Cornwall, 2016; Essilfie et al, 2021; Quisumbing et al, 2021; Tsiboe et al, 2018). This outcome is likely because existing indices do not account for nutrition‐sensitive indicators in operationalizing empowerment, and their focus is mainly on economic enablers and productive resources while targeting a nutrition or food security outcome.…”

Gender, Empowerment and Food Security Status of Households in Nigeria

“…The study found that female-headed households are less food secure compared to male-headed households after controlling for both observed and unobserved factors. There are also strands of studies that have examined the effects of women's empowerment on food security [22][23][24][25].…”