Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

This member contributed to:

    • Ms. Patrice Lucid

      Irish Forum For International Agricultural Development (IFIAD)
      Ireland

      Irish Forum for International Agricultural Development (IFIAD)

      IFIAD welcomes the draft guidelines. In particular, we wish to share some insights from a Women’s Empowerment and Nutrition dialogue hosted by IFIAD and the Centre for Global Development at University College Cork in April 2021, to complement the guidelines, in particular section Section 3.8 on Women and men’s ability to make strategic choices for healthy diets and good nutrition, para 120.

      The main challenge identified was how to promote women’s empowerment and improved nutrition and health in such a way that women’s individual needs are being met. Often nutrition programmes that focus on better community and childhood nutrition are targeted at women, but their own nutritional status is neglected. Evidence shows that empowering women can lead to increased household diet diversity and food security, however women’s own nutritional status does not correlate to their empowerment status.

      The Women’s Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI) was developed to contribute to a shift in thinking about empowerment in the context of women’s nutrition. The index bridges the missing link between empowerment and individual women’s nutrition and health.

      The WENI introduces the concept of nutritional empowerment as a method to identify barriers to increased nutrition for women. It encompasses the basis of both empowerment and drivers of nutrition to expand on household nutrition but also examines the causes of female malnutrition. It measures women’s knowledge, resources, agency and achievements in food, health, fertility, and institutional support.

      Key insights from the dialogue included:

      · Women’s nutritional empowerment is a concept introduced as a method to capture underlining structural factors determining poor nutrition and health of women.

      · The determinants of women’s nutritional disempowerment are context specific and require detailed analysis to identify the main barriers to improved nutrition.

      · Both women’s empowerment and nutrition are extremely complex issues, and have multi-sector determinants therefore a multi-sector approach to address them both simultaneously is needed.

      · There are opportunities to use new approaches to identify the main barriers to ensure appropriate future planning on women and nutrition.

      · The potential negative outcome of overburdening women with increased workload should always be considered and closely monitored.

      · Social behavioural change of relationships within families and communities can off-set the over-burdening of women.

      Link to policy brief http://www.ifiad.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Policy-Brief-on-Webinar-…

      See the attachments: