Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture and Nutritional Outcomes in Ethiopia

ETHIOPIAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH INSTITUTE

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Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture and Nutritional Outcomes in Ethiopia

Feiruz Yimer and Fanaye TaddesseIFPRI- ESSP29th International Conference of Agricultural EconomicsAugust 8-14Milan, Italy

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Introduction

• Intra-household resource allocation has a considerable role to play in nutritional outcomes.

• The extent to which women control resources largely determines the kind of care they provide for their children.

• lack of control over household resources, time, knowledge, and social support networks -> poor nutritional outcomes.

• Empirical research mostly shows that greater control by women in household has an impact on the nutritional and educational outcomes of children

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Objective of our research

• Look into the impact of women’s empowerment on nutritional outcomes of children and women.

• Complex linkages; direction of relationship between women’s status and nutrition not straight forward.

• Women’s empowerment through engaging in agriculture or other paid work

could reduce the amount of time available for them to take care of themselves as well as their children.

Positive income effect

Measuring women’s empowerment not easy. Use new measure of women empowerment called Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI).

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Data

• Data from a baseline survey conducted for the evaluation of the FtF program in Ethiopia, the US government global hunger and food security initiative (USAID)

• Collected by CSA in collaboration with IFPRI in June 2013.

• The data is collected

o 5 regions (Tigray, Amhara, Oromiya, Somalia and SNNP)

o 84 woredas (districts)

o 7,011 households

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Methodology

• we estimated the following equation:

Where Y - vector of women and child nutritional outcomes. I - vector of individual characteristics, H - household characteristics and - the error term.

Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI)

• Developed by researchers at USAID, IFPRI, and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI)

• Composed of two sub-indexes: the Five Domains of Empowerment sub-index (5DE) and the Gender Parity sub-Index (GPI)

Five Domains of Empowerment sub-index (5DE) measures the empowerment of women in five areas (90 percent of the total WEAI); and

The Gender Parity Index (GPI) measures the empowerment gap of men and women within the household(10 percent of the total WEAI)

Methodology - Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI)

• The five domains, their definitions under the WEAI, the corresponding indicators, and their weights for the 5DE are:

Domain(each weighted 1/5 of 5DE sub-index

Indicator Weight

ProductionInput in productive decisions 1/10Autonomy in production 1/10

ResourcesOwnership of assets 1/15Purchase, sale, or transfer of assets 1/15Access to and decisions about credit 1/15

Income Control over use of income 1/15

LeadershipGroup member 1/10Speaking in public 1/10

TimeWorkload 1/10Leisure 1/10

Methodology (Cont.) WEAI Components

• How empowered are Ethiopian women in Agriculture?

• The female respondent’s individual-level 5DE profile or score (weighted average of the 10 indicators)

• The average 5DE score is 0.64

A lower level of empowerment in agriculture for Ethiopian women compared with women in Bangladesh (0.75), Uganda (0.79), Guatemala (0.69) and Nepal (0.58).

• The findings from the WEAI diagnostics are used to identify the focus of analysis.

• Contribution of each of the five domains to disempowerment

Leadership, Time, Resources, Production and Income

Descriptive of WEAI

Descriptive - Contribution of each of the 5 domains to disempowerment of women

Production11%

Resources25%

Income7%

Leadership30%

Time27%

Descriptive - Contribution of each of the 10 domain indicators to disempowerment of women

Input in productive decisions

3%Autonomy in production

7%Ownership of

assets5%

Purchase, sale or transfer of

assets5%

Access to and decisions on

credit15%

Control over use of income

7%Group membership

15%

Speaking in public15%

Workload13%

Leisure14%

Production-Autonomy in production

Resource- Decision on credit Income- Control over use of

income Leadership- Group membership Time- Workload

Descriptive-Nutritional outcomes

Children's Nutritional Outcomes (under 5 years)

Stunting (%) 51.3

Wasting (%) 12.1

Underweight (%) 33.1

Women's Nutritional Outcomes  

Dietary Diversity (No. of food groups) 1.49

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Methodology

• Following the works by IFPRI colleagues (Sraboni et al, 2014 in Bangladesh and Malapit et al, 2013)

• Outcome variables-

HAZ and dietary diversity of children

dietary diversity of women

• Possible endogeneity of the empowerment measures and production diversity - instrumental variables (IV) technique.

• Controlled for household and community level characteristics

Result: Regression on children dietary diversity

Model I Model II Model III Model IV Model V Model VI

Five Domains of Empowerment 3.380***

Group membership 0.304***

Credit decision 1.461***

Decision on Income 0.407***

Autonomy in production 0.200

Workload 0.000

Result: Regression on children Height-for-Age

Model I Model II Model III Model IV Model VModel VI

Five Domains of Empowerment 3.127***

Group membership 0.249

Credit decision 1.257*

Decision on Income 0.586*

Autonomy in production 0.151

Workload -0.118

Result: Regression on Women dietary diversity

Model I Model II Model III Model IV Model V Model VI

Five Domains of Empowerment 3.186***

Group membership 0.605**

Credit decision 1.892***

Decision on Income 0.338

Autonomy in production 0.237

Workload 0.161**

Children’s nutritional outcomes:

• Wealth

• Availability of dairy cows and chicken

• Dependency ratio

Women’s Dietary Diversity

• Education

• Wealth

• Availability of dairy cows and chicken

• Number of crops produced by the household

Result-Additional variables

Conclusion

• Women’s empowerment has a positive impact on children’s Dietary Diversity and stunting as well as women’s Dietary Diversity

• Having say on credit decisions and decision on income has implication on nutritional outcomes of children and women

• Our study confirms finding from other countries:

Nepal (Malpit et. al, 2013): Autonomy in production dietary diversity of both women and children

Bangladesh (Sraboni et. al, 2013): Over all women empowerment score, number of groups in which a women is an active member and women’s control over asset household dietary diversity

Ghana (Malapit et. al, 2013): 5DE infant and young child feeding

role in credit decisions women’s dietary diversity