Intrahousehold empowerment patterns, gender power relations, and food security in Uganda

• Published date: 01 May 2024
• Author: Farzaneh Barak,Jackson Efitre,Robinson Odong,Hugo Melgar‐Quiñonez
• Date: 01 May 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wfp2.12071

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Intrahousehold empowerment patterns, gender

power relations, and food security in Uganda

Farzaneh Barak

1

| Jackson Efitre

2

| Robinson Odong

2

|

Hugo Melgar-Quiñonez

1,3

1

School of Human Nutrition, Montreal,

Quebec, Canada

2

Department of Zoology, Entomology

and Fisheries Sciences, College of

Natural Sciences, Makerere University,

Kampala, Uganda

3

Margaret A. Gilliam Institute for Global

Food Security, McGill University,

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Correspondence

Farzaneh Barak, School of Human Nutrition,

McGill University, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue,

Montreal, Quebec H9X 3V9, Canada.

Email: farzaneh.barak@mail.mcgill.ca

Funding information

Fonds de Recherche du Québec Société et

Culture (FRQSC), Grant/Award Number:

277185; Australian Center for

International Agricultural Research

(ACIAR) and Canada’s International

Development Research Center (IDRC)

through the NutriFish project, Uganda,

Grant/Award Number: 109041-001

Abstract

This study examined (a) the relationship between

women’s empowerment, men’s empowerment, and

food security within households and (b) the effect of

gender power in households on the food security status

of women and men in Uganda’s fishing villages

using NutriFish project data (N=762). An inaugural

intersectional gender analysis approach applied the

project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture

Index (pro-WEAI), categorizing indicators into five

domains: decision making, labor sharing, resource

access, norms and beliefs, and gender parity within

households. Binary logit models were computed, includ-

ing interactions between the empowerment of women

and men, controllingfor individual- and household-level

characteristics, and stratified by gender and occupation

(i.e., fishing vs. non-fishing) to account for context differ-

ences. Results showed that empowering women in non-

fishing groups enhanced food security for both genders,

regardless of men’s empowerment. In fishing groups,

women’s food security improved most when their part-

ners were already empowered, while men’sempower-

ment remained relatively unaffected. Notably, the

norms and beliefs domain was strongly linked to food

security, except for non-fishing men. Context-specific

Received: 12 October 2023 Revised: 24 March 2024 Accepted: 25 March 2024

DOI: 10.1002/wfp2.12071

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits

use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or

adaptations are made.

© 2024 The Authors. World Food Policy published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Policy Studies Organization.

World Food Policy. 2024;10:7–32. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/wfp2 7

gender interventions and analyses are vital to address

food security disparities and critical to informing project

implementers and policymakers in gender- and

nutrition-sensitive development projects to target the

most vulnerable groups.

KEYWORDS

context specific, food security, gender analysis, intersectionality,

small-scale fisheries, Uganda, women’s empowerment

1|INTRODUCTION

All over the world, food insecurity experienced by women is not equal to food insecurity experi-

enced by men (Broussard, 2019; Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] et al., 2023; Sinclair

et al., 2019). In the poorest regions, including South-of-Sahara Africa (SSA), women are two

percentage points more likely than men to be severely food insecure (Broussard, 2019). Our

study concerned food security and gender.

The World Health Organization (WHO, 2020a) defined gender as “socially constructed roles,

behaviours, expressions, and identities,”recognized under the gender binary as “man”and

“woman.”Sex, on the other hand, refers to biological characteristics at birth, categorized as

“male”or “female”or “intersex”(Morgan et al., 2016; WHO, 2002). Food security exists “when

all people, at all times, have social, physical, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutri-

tious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”

(FAO, 2001, p. 49).

Current knowledge about food security and gender is largely based on empirical studies that

investigated the relationship between women’s empowerment and their own food security

(Asitik & Abu, 2020; Aziz et al., 2020; Bhandari & Burroway, 2018; Sraboni et al., 2014;

Wei et al., 2021) or their households (Asitik & Abu, 2020; Aziz et al., 2021; Bain et al., 2020;

Clement et al., 2019; Essilfie et al., 2021; Galiè et al., 2019; Murugani & Thamaga-Chitja, 2019;

Sariyev et al., 2020; Sharaunga et al., 2016; Tsiboe et al., 2018; Zereyesus, 2017). Although

empirical evidence of the positive association between women’s empowerment and food secu-

rity is growing, it is still inconclusive (Asitik & Abu, 2020; Aziz et al., 2020,2021; Bain

et al., 2020; Clement et al., 2019; Essilfie et al., 2021; Galiè et al., 2019; Sariyev et al., 2020;

Tsiboe et al., 2018; Wei et al., 2021).

For example, Murugani and Thamaga-Chitja (2019) found that increasing the input of

women in decision making, their access to credit and opportunities to speak in public were

associated with an increase in household dietary diversity as a proxy of measuring household

food security status in South Africa. Sraboni et al. (2014) reported that, per capita, calorie avail-

ability was greater for empowered women than disempowered women in Bangladesh. They also

reported a positive relationship between the equal decision-making rights of women with

household livelihoods and their dietary quality. Kehinde et al. (2021), however, found that

women’s achievement in productive decision making and credit access was associated with an

increase in the severity of food insecurity.

8BARAK ET AL.