Women empowerment and children’s dietary diversity in Iganga and Bugiri Districts

Abstract

Globally, scholarly and development interventions underscore the significance of women empowerment in children’s wellbeing and addressing nutrition related issues at individual and household level. However, the focus on the combined effect of contextual factors such as gender role attitudes, socioeconomic factors and women empowerment, has received limited attention. This therefore limits interventions from effectively addressing inequalities between women and men that perpetuate poor diets for children. This research presents an integrated assessment of the relationship between women empowerment, characteristics of the woman, husband and household, and their combined impact on the dietary diversity of under-five-year-old children in Iganga and Bugiri districts. This cross-sectional study, draws evidence from quantitative methodologies using the modified version of project level women empowerment in Agriculture index tool. Additional modules included ICT use, dietary diversity, gender role attitudes and socio-economic and demographic characteristics of women, husband and household factors. The questionnaire was administered to a randomly selected sample of 445 women from Iganga and Bugiri districts through semi-structured interviews. Overall there is a prevalent state of disempowerment, with 97.30% of women failing to achieve empowerment. Only 15% of the women were in the high empowerment category indicating that they were above the average empowerment score. The study emphasizes the influence of women empowerment on shaping the dietary diversity of children. Empowered women exhibited increased child consumption of breast milk, eggs, and legumes, seeds, and nuts. Furthermore, the study indicates that women empowerment through asset ownership and egalitarian gender role attitudes promoting women working outside the home positively associated with children's Dietary Diversity Scores of children of different age groups. Additionally, women with egalitarian beliefs of raising sons and daughters for equal future opportunities provided better diets to their children. However, women's autonomy in income and beliefs opposing men’s overall position in major household decisions shows an inverse relationship with dietary diversity. Specifically, ownership of large livestock, mechanized farm equipment and small consumer durables increased chances of higher dietary diversity score for the children aged 6-23 months. The findings underscore the need for targeted interventions addressing specific empowerment indicators and promotion of egalitarian gender role attitudes of men and women to enhance women empowerment and improve child dietary diversity for children of different age groups. Development interventions should prioritize promoting women empowerment, particularly through asset ownership, emphasize training for women, and carefully promote strategies that enhance household incomes and access to produce markets. Lastly, a call is made for interventions promoting strategies that address gender norms and stereotypes that especially hinder women’s work beyond the home for enhancement of better diets amongst children.