Exploring a Pathway to Women's Empowerment Through a Homestead Agriculture Program in Rural Bangladesh Open Access

Dupuis, Sarah (Summer 2020)

Permanent URL: https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/kh04dq865?locale=en
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Abstract

Women in rural Bangladesh commonly face multiple, interrelated problems, including food insecurity, malnutrition, and low levels of empowerment (Sinharoy, 2017). This thesis identifies a pathway to empowerment among female participants in a four-year nutrition-agriculture program aimed at married women in rural Bangladesh. 40 in-depth interviews and 12 focus groups discussions with men and women were conducted in both intervention and comparison communities exploring aspects of empowerment and lifestyle changes over the course of the intervention. The results of these interviews were analyzed and used to identify a new pathway to women's empowerment through the intervention. The stages of the pathway occur in the following order: 1) Participants receive training and materials, 2) Home garden and poultry rearing initiation, 3) The initial harvest, 4) Social or monetary resources generated through the leveraging of garden surplus, 5) Increased respect in household decision making, 6) Renewable, sustainable resource generation, and 7) sustained empowerment.

The most meaningful improvements in empowerments occurred among participants who were able to produce foods beyond their household consumption and were able to successfully leverage surplus resources and gain higher utility and therefore bargaining power in their household. Additionally, they leveraged negotiation skills with their husbands, fostered social support networks with other women, and developed agency through increased self-efficacy and motivation. Meanwhile, the least successful participants lacked in critical areas, such as spousal support, social support networks, or the space or time to produce enough food to leverage for additional resources and increase their utility within their household.

Table of Contents

I. INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………………… 1

II. LITERATURE REVIEW ……….………………………………………………………….3

Defining Women’s empowerment ……………………….………..………………3

Empowerment Through Agriculture..…………………….……………………….6

Utilization of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index………..…..10

Empowerment and Nutrition ………………………………………………...……12

Empowerment in Bangladesh………………………………………………..……15

Homestead Food Production ………………………………………..………..…..18

Conclusion …………………………………………………….…………………...…21

III. MANUSCRIPT …………………………………………………..……………………...…24

Contribution of Student ………………………………………………………..…. 24

Abstract …………………………………………………………………….……..…..25

Introduction …………………………………………………..…………..…………..26

Methods ………………………………………………………………...……………. 28

Study Design …………………………………………………………...……..28

Data Collection ………………………………………………………………..30

Data Analysis……….…………………...…………………………………… 36

Ethics and Informed Consent ………………………..………….………….39

Results..…………………………………………………………………..…………. 39

Discussion.……………………………………………………………….………… 51

IV. Public Health Implications and Policy Recommendations ………….……..… 66

Public Health Implications …………………………..……………………………66

Policy Recommendations …………………………….…………….……..……..67

V. REFERENCES ………………..…………………………………..…….………..…69

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