Women's agency in nutrition in the association between women's empowerment in agriculture and food security: A case study from Uganda

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• Author: Farzaneh Barak,Jackson Efitre,Robinson Odong,Hugo Melgar‐Quiñonez
• Date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wfp2.12063

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Women’s agency in nutrition in the association

between women’s empowerment in agriculture

and food security: A case study from Uganda

Farzaneh Barak

1

|Jackson Efitre

3

|Robinson Odong

3

|

Hugo Melgar-Quiñonez

1,2

1

School of Human Nutrition, McGill

University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

2

Margaret A. Gilliam Institute for Global

Food Security, McGill University,

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

3

Department of Zoology, Entomology

and Fisheries Sciences, College of

Natural Sciences, Makerere University,

Kampala, Uganda

Correspondence

Farzaneh Barak, School of Human Nutrition,

McGill University, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue,

Montreal H9X 3V9, QC, Canada.

Email: farzaneh.barak@mail.mcgill.ca

Funding information

NutriFish project, Uganda, Grant/Award

Number: 109041-001; Fonds de

Recherche du Québec Société et Culture

(FRQSC), QC, Canada, Grant/Award

Number: 277185

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between women’s

empowerment in agriculture (WEA), women’s agency

in nutrition, and their food security. It aimed to quan-

tify the moderating effect of women’s agency in nutri-

tion on the association between WEA and food

security. Data from the NutriFish project, a gender-

and nutrition-sensitive agricultural intervention in fish-

ing villages in Uganda, were utilized. The study

included 380 primary Ugandan female decision makers

in dual adult households. WEA was measured using

the Project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agricul-

ture Index (pro-WEAI). Women’s agency in nutrition

was assessed through measures of agency in regular

diet, pregnancy diet, breastfeeding diet, and food pur-

chase. Binary logit regression models were employed to

estimate differential associations between WEA and

food security, testing three-way interactions between

WEA, agency in regular diet, and food purchase.

Results showed that WEA was associated with a 0.18

This work was supported by The Australian Center for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and Canada’s

International Development Research Center (IDRC) through the NutriFish project, Uganda (Project No: 109041-001)

and Fonds de Recherche du Québec Société et Culture (FRQSC), QC, Canada (Doctoral Award No: 277185).

Received: 4 July 2023Revised: 13 September 2023Accepted: 15 September 2023

DOI: 10.1002/wfp2.12063

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.

© 2023 The Authors. World Food Policy published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Policy Studies Organization.

228 World Food Policy. 2023;9:228–249.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/wfp2

increase in the predicted probability of food security

(p< .01). Women’s participation in food purchase deci-

sions strengthened the WEA-food security association

by 0.33 (p< .05).The results suggested thatpromoting

women’s food purchase agency can enhance the posi-

tive link between WEA and food security. Prioritizing

interventions empowering women in food purchase

decisions improves food security in gender- and

nutrition-sensitive programs.

KEYWORDS

agency in nutrition, food purchase agency, food security, Uganda,

women’s empowerment

1|INTRODUCTION

Recent studies have suggested that to identify and address barriers to the food security of

women, a complementary set of indicators is needed to capture the empowerment status of

women explicitly in the domain of nutrition (Narayanan et al., 2019,2022). Narayanan et al.

(2019) defined empowerment in nutrition as “the process by which individuals acquire the

capacity to be well fed and healthy, in a context where this capacity was previously denied to

them”(p. 2). One of the key dimensions of empowerment is “agency,”which is the ability to

define goals and act upon them (Kabeer, 1999, p. 438). Kabeer (1999) operationalized agency as

quantified decision making that can be indicated by cognitive actions of reflection and analysis

such as deceiving or manipulating, bargaining, and subverting (Kabeer, 1999). In the current

study, women’s agency in nutrition was referred to the participation of women in the decisions

about their dietary intake and food purchases in the household.

Narayanan et al. (2019) adapted the definition of empowerment by Kabeer (1999) and con-

ceptualized the empowerment of women in nutrition as the expansion of the capacity through

processes that support the voice of women around their nutritional status (Narayanan

et al., 2022). Supportive processes include promoting access to and control over sufficient and

nutritious food, increasing knowledge related to nutrition, participating in the decisions related

to individual health and nutrition, and having the support of the family, community, and other

institutions to maintain healthy practices (Narayanan et al., 2022).

Empowerment in nutrition indicates individual ability to be empowered and the broader

structural and contextual freedom from constraints such as power relations in food and gender

systems. Several researchers have attempted to quantify women’s empowerment in nutrition;

yet these indices are not widely or rigorously applied (Hannan et al., 2020; Malapit et al., 2014;

Olney et al., 2016). The recent Women’s Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI) served to

introduce an approach aimed at quantifying empowerment in nutrition (Narayanan et al., 2019,

2022). The explicit focus of WENI researchers is on the quantification of nutrition-focused

empowerment, which was shown to be a statistically significant and meaningful predictor of

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