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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

Ruth Meinzen-Dick

Ruth Meinzen-Dick is a Senior Research Fellow in the Natural Resources and Resilience Unit. She has extensive transdisciplinary research experience in using qualitative and quantitative research methods. Her work focuses on two broad (and sometimes interrelated) areas: how institutions affect how people manage natural resources, and the role of gender in development processes. 

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IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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experts

Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion

Kalyani Raghunathan

Research Fellow

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Bio

Kalyani Raghunathan is Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit, based in New Delhi, India. Her research lies at the intersection of agriculture, gender, social protection, and public health and nutrition, with a specific focus on South Asia and Africa. Her recent work uses a range of methods—from secondary data analysis to quasi-experimental evaluations and randomized controlled trials—and focuses on the affordability of nutritious diets as well as women’s microfinance and agriculture collectives and their impact on welfare, youth, and social protection.

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Publications

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Journal Article

Women improving nutrition through self-help groups in India: Does nutrition information help?

2024Kumar, Neha; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Scott, Samuel P.; Menon, Purnima; Thai, Giang; Gupta, Shivani; Nichols, Carly; WINGS study team
Details

Women improving nutrition through self-help groups in India: Does nutrition information help?

Women’s self-help groups (SHGs) are an important platform for reaching poor women in India. Despite SHGs’ women-focused programming, evidence of the impact of SHG-based interventions on nutrition outcomes is limited, and most evaluations of nutrition interventions have not examined intermediate outcomes along the impact pathways or outcomes for women themselves. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of an integrated agriculture-nutrition intervention delivered through women’s SHGs in five states in central and eastern India. The interventions involved the delivery of nutrition behavior change communication to groups through participatory approaches, community engagement around key issues, and the strengthening of collective organizations. Our analysis is based on three rounds of rich panel data on close to 2700 rural women and their households from eight districts in these five states and qualitative work from an accompanying process evaluation. Using difference-in-difference models with nearest neighbor matching methods, we present results on women’s anthropometry and diet-related outcomes. We do not observe any improvements in women’s BMI or overall dietary diversity. Although more women in the nutrition intensification arm consumed animal source foods, nuts and seeds, and fruits, this was not enough to increase overall dietary diversity scores or the proportion of women achieving minimum dietary diversity. We measure intermediate outcomes along the program’s impact pathways and find improvements in household incomes, cultivation of home gardens, and utilization of government schemes but not in women’s empowerment. The lack of improvement in anthropometry and diets despite changes in some intermediate outcomes can be attributed to several factors such as low implementation intensity, poor facilitator capacity and incentives, the lack of relevance of the BCC topics to the average SHG member, and resource and agency constraints to adoption of recommended practices. Although we do not have data to test the parallel trends assumption and so do not interpret our results as causal, these findings do suggest that optimism about using group-based platforms needs to be tempered in resource-poor contexts.

Year published

2024

Authors

Kumar, Neha; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Scott, Samuel P.; Menon, Purnima; Thai, Giang; Gupta, Shivani; Nichols, Carly; WINGS study team

Citation

Kumar, Neha; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Scott, Samuel P.; Menon, Purnima; Thai, Giang; Gupta, Shivani; Nichols, Carly; and WINGS study team. 2024. Women improving nutrition through self-help groups in India: Does nutrition information help? Food Policy 128(October 2024): 102716. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102716

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Agriculture; Body Mass Index; Maternal Nutrition; Self-help Groups; Women; Nutrition Education

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102716 Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Journal Article

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Working Paper

Can farmer collectives empower women and improve their welfare? Mixed methods evidence from India

2024Ray, Soumyajit; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Bhanjdeo, Arundhita; Heckert, Jessica
Details

Can farmer collectives empower women and improve their welfare? Mixed methods evidence from India

Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs)—farmer collectives, often legally registered – can mitigate some of the constraints smallholder farmers face by improving their access to extension, services, and markets, especially for women. We evaluate the effects of a set of interventions delivered through women-only FPOs in Jharkhand, India, using a panel of 1200 households and a difference-in-difference model with nearest neighbor matching. A complementary qualitative study in the same areas helps triangulate and interpret our findings. The interventions aimed to improve agricultural productivity by coordinating production and improving access to services, while also providing gender sensitization trainings to FPO leaders and members. We collect household data on asset ownership and agricultural outcomes and individual data on women’s and men’s empowerment using the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index for Market Inclusion (pro-WEAI+MI). Our results for asset ownership, land cultivated, cropping intensity, and per acre yields, revenues or costs are statistically insignificant. Effects on men’s and women’s empowerment are mixed. While we see positive effects on women’s decisionmaking, asset ownership, control over income and attitudes towards intimate partner violence, the program is associated with an increase in workload and a reduction in active group membership for both men and women. Men appear to cede control over resources and decisionmaking to other household members. Additional analyses suggest that while some effects can occur in the short-term, others take time to accrue. FPO based interventions that aim to empower women or other marginalized groups likely require sustained investments over multiple years and will need to go beyond improving FPO functioning and increasing women’s participation to transforming social norms.

Year published

2024

Authors

Ray, Soumyajit; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Bhanjdeo, Arundhita; Heckert, Jessica

Citation

Ray, Soumyajit; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Bhanjdeo, Arundhita; and Heckert, Jessica. 2024. Can farmer collectives empower women and improve their welfare? Mixed methods evidence from India. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2267. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/151877

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Agriculture; Farmers Organizations; Cooperatives; Markets; Prices; Yields; Empowerment; Smallholders; Women; Gender

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Gender

Record type

Working Paper

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Brief

Gender and age gaps in voice & agency in community governance: The value of female local political representation in India and Africa South of the Sahara under intensifying conflicts and climate uncertainty

2024Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Kyle, Jordan; Kosec, Katrina; Raghunathan, Kalyani
Details

Gender and age gaps in voice & agency in community governance: The value of female local political representation in India and Africa South of the Sahara under intensifying conflicts and climate uncertainty

Expanding women’s voice and agency (VA) within governance and decision-making has increasingly been recognized as necessary for promoting women’s welfare, community development, and inclusive food systems. VA are critical components of gender equality, in addition to access to resources and economic opportunities. While agency relates to an individual’s ability to make meaningful choices (our specific focus is on choices made beyond the household), voice within community governance and decision-making relates to an individual’s ability to play a public role in decision-making processes that affect one’s life. Exercising VA within community governance and decision-making involves having a meaningful say in the public sphere. Women’s VA within communities may strengthen resilience, increase women’s access to essential resources, improve women’s decision-making power in various domains including the household, and facilitate broader social networks for women. Sustainable Development Goal five on gender equality specifically targets the full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership for women at all levels of political life. However, gender gaps in VA are persistent. These gaps can be further aggravated by adverse external shocks, such as climate uncertainty and conflicts, which can impact resources, capital, and economic opportunities and which are often disproportionately harmful to women.

Year published

2024

Authors

Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Kyle, Jordan; Kosec, Katrina; Raghunathan, Kalyani

Citation

Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Kyle, Jordan; Kosec, Katrina; and Raghunathan, Kalyani. 2024. Gender and age gaps in voice & agency in community governance: The value of female local political representation in India and Africa South of the Sahara under intensifying conflicts and climate uncertainty. Policy Note August 2024. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Decision Making; Gender; Governance; Politics; Women; Gender Gap; Climate Change

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Brief

Events

32nd International Conference of Agricultural Economists
IFPRI at External Event

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August 2 to 7, 2024

32nd International Conference of Agricultural Economists

The triennial International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE-2024), centred on the theme “Transformation Towards Sustainable Agri-Food Systems” is scheduled from August 2-7, 2024, in New Delhi, India. The conference offers a distinctive platform, providing a golden opportunity for the agricultural academic institutions and researchers to convene in person, exchange knowledge, and actively contribute to the […]

2024 GFPR India Launch
Series/Special Event

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July 4, 2024, 10:00 – 5:20 pm

2024 GFPR India Launch

Unhealthy diets are a major driver of all forms of malnutrition, including undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and overweight and obesity. At the same time, our food systems contribute about a third of greenhouse gas emissions and degrade natural resources. The 2024 Global Food Policy Report examines policies, innovations, and governance solutions to strengthen diet quality and […]

From Research to Impact: Towards just and Resilient Agri-food Systems
IFPRI Program/Country Event

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October 9 to 12, 2023

From Research to Impact: Towards just and Resilient Agri-food Systems

Conference: October 09, 2023 – 9:00 AM to October 12, 2023 – 6:00 PM IST. IFPRI is participating in the 2023 annual CGIAR gender research conference will take place in New Delhi, India.

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News

November 09, 2022 | In the News

India’s double-edged nutrition problem (Code Blue) 

IFPRI’s research fellows Kalyani Raghunathan and Derek Headey, in an op-ed in Code Blue (Malaysia), focus on India’s problem of malnutrition, which includes under- and over-nutrition simultaneously. The authors discuss both the implications and policy recommendations to improve access to affordable healthy diets in the country. “Diet quality, already alarmingly bad, is only likely to have deteriorated in […]

October 21, 2020 | In the News

After Abysmal Hunger Index Rank, Paper Points Out 3 of 4 Rural Indians Can’t Afford Nutritious Diet (The Wire) 

The Wire (India) published an article on the results of the Global Hunger Index (GHI). According to GHI, India ranks 94 out of 107 nations and falls in the “serious” hunger category. Along with these results, IFPRI has published a Food Policy journal article titled Affordability of nutritious diets in rural India. Research Fellow Kalyani Raghunathan and Senior Research Fellow Derek Headey, with senior […]

October 14, 2020 | In the News

60 percent of rural India can’t afford nutritious diets (Hindustan Times)

Hindustan Times published an article focusing on a paper by Research Fellow Kalyani Raghunathan that states the cost of a recommended diet (CoRD) in India in 2011 (the most recent year for which expenditure and consumption data is available) was ₹45.1 and ₹51.3 for women and men, numbers that were almost 1.6 times the commonly used World Bank poverty line […]

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