There is increasing evidence that empowering women is a determining factor of malnutrition, because women’s empowerment affects contemporaneous outcomes such as household food security and dietary diversity as well as women’s own BMI, which in turn has intergenerational effects on children’s nutritional status. However, women’s empowerment has many dimensions and not all are conducive to better nutrition. The precise pathways via which women's empowerment may affect nutrition security are only poorly understood. We start from the assumption that more evidence is needed on what kind of interventions can enhance women’s empowerment in a way that it addresses the underlying determinants of malnutrition to achieve SDG 2 and to end all forms of malnutrition. We will develop a conceptual framework that lays out the pathways from women’s empowerment to improved nutrition. Based on the conceptual framework, we will then develop and test two new scalable training modules that focus on psychological constraints and gender norms to improve women’s empowerment, with the aim to ultimately improve nutrition and food security. The project mainly focuses on Bangladesh and Ethiopia. However, using data from the most recent Demographic and Health Surveys, we will determine associations between women’s empowerment, and nutritional security of the household, by estimating structural equation models, for as much as possible countries out of the list of 27 countries that the Ministry has a development cooperation with. Ample attention will be given to inform policymakers and practitioners about main results of the study to ensure a wide dissemination of the findings.
This study is innovative as it provides a new pathways framework of how women’s empowerment relates to food and nutrition security. It is also the first study that tests a combination of conventional economic interventions with newly developed modules focusing on psychological constraints as well as gender norms.
