Abstract
Policymakers and development practitioners argue that the enhancement of agricultural production offers pathways to poverty alleviation and hence food security. Feminist scholars emphasize gender-inclusive development in the agricultural sector for better nutrition and food security. However, the narratives about gendered food and nutrition only partially consider the contextual processes and causal structures. This study examines how causal processes and structures lead to diverse food and nutrition outcomes, food and nutritional insecurity or inequality at the intra-household level. We combine gender and class to measure both gender differences within class and class differences by gender. Even after decades of development interventions, undernutrition continues to persist amongst farming households in rural Bangladesh. We use the case of Bangladesh to assess the gender-nutrition linkages within agriculture. Combining ethnographic investigation and quantitative analyses across three villages in Bangladesh, we argue that the economic well-being of a household does not guarantee food and nutrition for individual household members. Women from well-off families continue to suffer from inadequate food and nutrition. We found two mechanisms of intra-household inequity. The first was women’s financial dependency on their spouses. The second one was the gambling behaviour of their spouse.
Presenters
Nishith TannyStudent, PhD, Australian National University, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
GENDER, AGRARIAN CLASS, FOOD AND NUTRITION
