Transcript The Impact of Feeding Children in School: Evidence from

Women’s Status and the Changing Nature of
Rural Livelihoods in Asia
Agnes Quisumbing
International Food Policy Research Institute
Manila, Philippines
8 August 2007
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Diversity and change
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It is difficult to characterize “women’s status” in Asia because
women’s conditions within Asia are very diverse, and they are also
changing
This presentation:
1. Presents a snapshot of women’s status in Asia based on the
World Gender Gap Report 2006
2. Summarizes returns to closing the gender gap in terms of
reducing child malnutrition, and increasing incomes and
productivity
3. Identifies three trends in rural livelihoods
4. Based on these trends, discusses appropriate policies and
interventions to empower women
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Contrasts and contradictions
• Gender Gap Index 2006 (Hausman, Tyson, and Zahidi
2007) examines the gap between men and women in
115 countries,in four categories:
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economic participation and opportunity
educational attainment
health and survival
political empowerment
• Although the Philippines is among top 10 countries, out
of 8 regions, Asia ranks third from the bottom overall
• Lowest performance on the health and survival subindex
• Second to the lowest in the economic opportunity and
participation subindex
• Third from the lowest in the educational attainment subindex.
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These results driven by countries with large
populations
• China: ranks 114 out of 115 because of sex ratio at birth,
“missing women”
• Bangladesh, India, Pakistan: large disparities between
men and women in all four areas of the index
• Why should we care?
• Evidence worldwide shows that increasing resources
controlled by women yields large benefits in reducing
child malnutrition and increasing rural incomes and
productivity
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Reducing child malnutrition: The Asian
Enigma
• Why is South Asia’s child malnutrition rate so
much higher than Sub-Saharan Africa’s, when it
does so much better with respect to many of the
long-accepted determinants of child nutritional
status, such as national income, democracy,
food supplies, health services, and education?
(Ramalingaswami et al. 1996)
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Child malnutrition and women’s status across
regions
Indicators of women’s status
Percentage of children under 5
50
60
45
50
40
35
40
30
25
30
20
Underweight
15
10
Stunted
5
Wasted
0
South SSA LAC
Asia
Women's
decisionma
king power
Societal
gender
equality
20
10
0
South SSA LACNorway
Asia
Source: Smith et al. 2003
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The link between women’s status and child
malnutrition
• Regression analysis shows that women’s status has a
significant, positive effect on children’s nutritional status
in all three regions.
• Women’s status improves child nutrition because women
with greater status have better nutritional status, are
better cared for themselves, and provide higher-quality
care to their children.
• Women’s status has the most influence where it is
lowest. The strongest effect is found in South Asia
followed by Sub-Saharan Africa, and it is weakest in
Latin America and the Caribbean.
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Increasing rural incomes and productivity
• In Bangladesh, untargeted technology dissemination was more likely
to benefit men and better-off households (Hallman, Lewis, and
Begum 2007). Efforts designed to reach women within poor
households—such as through NGO provision of training and credit
for vegetable improvement—achieved greater impacts on poverty.
• In China, where women-managed households have equal access to
family labor, quantity and quality of land, irrigation, and credit, there
is no significant difference in plot-level crop revenues between men
and women-managed farms (de Brauw et al. 2007).
• In the rural Philippines, where girls have higher educational
attainment than their brothers, they are more likely to enter
nonagricultural occupations and earn higher incomes from
nonagriculture than from farming (Quisumbing, Estudillo, and Otsuka
2004).
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Three trends in rural livelihoods
• Increasing male migration from rural to urban
areas
• Declining importance of agriculture and growth
of nonfarm sector
• Increasing female migration to urban areas (and
overseas)
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Policies to empower women will differ by
context
• Areas of male
outmigration
• Ensure access to land and
credit
• Economic development
strategies that encourage
competitive and efficient
markets
• Female agricultural
extension agents to deliver
technology and information
directly to women
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• Areas of declining
importance of agriculture
• Reduce barriers to female
participation in nonfarm
enterprises and nonfarm
employment
• Invest in women’s human
capital through schooling
and continuing education
programs
• Access to credit, markets,
and information
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Policies and context
• Areas of female outmigration
• Invest in women’s education
• Encourage competitive and efficient labor
markets
• Invest in infrastructure to enable families to
maintain social support networks (roads,
communications, banking)
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General policies
• Extend and strengthen schooling systems in rural
areas
• Promote competition in non-farm labor markets so as
to eliminate discrimination against women
• Reform property rights systems to be more equitable
towards women
• Develop agricultural technologies which increase the
returns to female labor, whether through increased
demand or increased labor productivity.
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