Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Resource Review
Researchers recently adapted the widely used Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) to develop a measurement tool that can help agricultural development projects better monitor and measure their impact. The tool restructures and adds indicators to measure project impact across groups and over time. Pro-WEAI is still under development and researchers are continuing to add to and improve on the survey methodology.
Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Resource Review
Using primary data from two Indian districts, collected as part of the Farming System for Nutrition (FSN) study, researchers examined the effect of work burdens on agricultural and nutritional outcomes. Their analyses identified the two pathways by which women’s agricultural work negatively affects household nutrition: lack of adequate time for care work in peak agricultural seasons, primarily due to intensified work burden, and the seasonal energy deficits that adversely affect their own health.
Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Resource Review
To explore the link between women’s empowerment and improved child nutrition, this study evaluated the outcomes of a nutrition- and gender-sensitive agriculture program in Burkina Faso. The results provide the first experimental evidence that efforts to increase women’s empowerment can lead to improved child nutrition. Authors suggest that programs seeking to improve child nutritional status should incorporate interventions designed to empower women.
Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Resource Review
Understanding food taboos and health beliefs can provide important insights into how social interactions affect nutritional status. This quantitative study investigates the influence of gender and power structures on dietary knowledge and practices at the household level. Authors call for a more inclusive approach to the study of food taboos and nutrition that takes into account power, history, environment, economics, and the politics in which food practices and nutrition occur.
Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Resource Review
In response to a demand for high-quality gender data and statistics, this report details UNICEF’s gender statistics framework and best practices for advancing gender data for children. This five-part document explains how UNICEF aims to apply a gender perspective during child data production, analysis, and dissemination. In addition, it identifies future UNICEF investments in quality data to address gender inequality in a child’s first two decades of life.
Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Resource Review
Empowering women is one of the key ways we can work to improve food security for all. In this factsheet, Feed the Future provides a brief outline of three actionable steps they are taking to close the “gender gaps” in our food systems: investing in women, engaging men, and measuring empowerment.
Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Resource Review
For this study, researchers examined nationally representative data from five countries in East Africa, considering measures of both child nutritional status and women’s empowerment. It found significant linkages between them. The article points out that although improving women's intrinsic agency may improve child nutrition (directly and through improved maternal nutrition), such strategies should also take household resource constraints into account.
Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Resource Review
In two districts in northern India, researchers conducted a cross-sectional survey among recently delivered women, husbands, and mothers/mothers-in-law to examine the association between four key determinants and three breastfeeding outcomes. Finding linkages between these key determinants and breastfeeding behaviors, the authors believe that maternal, health service, family, and community-level interventions can lead to improved breastfeeding practices in this region in India.
Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Resource Review
In Mozambique, USAID’s Maternal and Child Survival Program conducted this qualitative study using baseline assessments and endline studies.
Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Resource Review
The first years of life have long-term impacts on children’s development across language, cognitive, social-emotional, and motor domains, yet evidence on critical parent-young child interactions in low-income settings is scarce.