Does Women’s Empowerment Help Prevent Underweight and Wasting Children?

In 2020, 828 million people globally went hungry and almost 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) statistics and India continues to struggle with food security, malnutrition, and rising levels of anemia among women and children, especially in rural and indigenous areas like Odisha state.

In recent years, there have been a growing number of studies about how women’s empowerment — equipping women with the ability to make strategic life choices and access to resources — might help fight hunger, but there has been limited field evidence of their effects on food security, dietary quality, and childhood outcomes.

In the article “Women’s empowerment, household dietary diversity, and child anthropometry among vulnerable populations in Odisha, India” published in international journal PLOS ONE, researchers from the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT used the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) to measure the empowerment of women in 1,900 farm households located in 12 districts in the state of Odisha, India.

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Sylvester Ogutu, a researcher for the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT and the paper’s lead author, explains that by using this score and then comparing it to outcomes like the number of different foods found in the household and the weight of children for their age, a clear picture emerged.

“As primary care-givers, the empowerment of women contributes to improved child nutrition, health, and education,” he says, “Women’s empowerment in agricultural input use, sales, income, and other (access to credit, group membership and employment) decision-making domains was associated with fewer underweight and wasted children.”