The adage ‘Educate a woman, and you educate an entire family’ holds good in the realm of child nutrition too, as has been confirmed by a team of researchers who in their recent study found that empowering females women in tribal areas of Odisha, India, significantly improved child nutrition and reduced underweight and wasted children.
The study is crucial given India’s pressing health challenge as highlighted by the 2023 National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) which reports that over 40 per cent of tribal children are underweight and stunted, and about 30 per cent are wasted.
Published in PLOS ONE, the study analysed the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) to measure empowerment among 1,900 farm households.
It found that women’s empowerment in agricultural decision-making, income, and access to resources led to better household dietary diversity and higher weight-for-age and weight-for-height scores in children.
However, the study also suggested that complementary interventions are necessary to enhance dietary diversity further.
Sylvester Ogutu, a researcher for the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT and the paper’s lead author, explained 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 said and added, “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.”
Jonathan Mockshell, an agricultural economist at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, study lead, and a coauthor of the paper chipped in saying that in terms of the effects of women’s empowerment on the household dietary diversity score (HDDS) — a snapshot of the economic ability of a household to access a variety of foods dietary diversity — the study found women’s empowerment contributes to improved food production and dietary diversity.
“The magnitude of the effect of women’s empowerment on dietary diversity was relatively small, which suggests that complementary interventions may be required to achieve higher household dietary diversity,” he said in the study, “Women’s empowerment, household dietary diversity, and child anthropometry among vulnerable populations in Odisha, India”.
The researchers also measured the height and weight of children and discovered that women’s empowerment significantly increased children’s weight-for-age z-scores (WAZ), and weight-for-height z-scores (WHZ), but not their height-for-age scores (HAZ).
“The improvements in the z-scores contributed to reduced prevalence of underweight and wasting in children with mother’s with a higher empowerment score,” Mockshell said.