Until recently the role of women's social status in determining their children's nutritional health went largely unnoticed. That is, until researchers began to ponder the Asian Enigma-the question of why malnutrition is much more prevalent among children in South Asia than in Sub-Saharan Africa, even though South Asia surpasses Sub-Saharan Africa in most of the principal determinants of child nutrition. This report uses data from 36 countries in three developing regions to establish empirically that women's status, defined as women's power relative to men's, is an important determinant of children's nutritional status. It finds that the pathways through which status influences child nutrition and the strength of that influence differ considerably from one region to another. Where women's status is low, this research proves unequivocally that policies to eradicate gender discrimination not only benefit women but also their children.

Lisa C. Smith is a research fellow in the Food Consumption and Nutrition Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, D.C., and a visiting faculty member at the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Usha Ramakrishnan is an assistant professor in the Department of International Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.

Aida Ndiaye is a consultant to the Food Consumption and Nutrition Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Lawrence Haddad is director of the Food Consumption and Nutrition Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, D.C.

Reynaldo Martorell is professor of international nutrition and chair of the Department of International Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.

• Table of Contents, Tables, Figures, Foreword, Acknowledgements, and Summary
  (PDF 65K)
  
  
• Chapter 1: Introduction
  (PDF 48K)
  
  
• Chapter 2: Conceptual Framework
  (PDF 85K)
  
  
• Chapter 3: Data, Measures, and Methods
  (PDF 231K)
  
  
• Chapter 4: Results: Women's Status and Child Nutrition
  (PDF 148K)
  
  
• Chapter 5: Results: Women's Status, Women's Nutritional Status, and Care for Women
  (PDF 111K)
  
  
• Chapter 6: Results: Women's Status and Care for Children
  (PDF 162K)
  
  
• Chapter 7: The Asian Enigma
  (PDF 72K)
  
  
• Chapter 8: Conclusions and Policy Implications
  (PDF 79K)
  
  
• Appendix A: Models of Household Decisionmaking
  (PDF 66K)
  
  
• Appendix B: Validation of Measure of Women's Relative Decisionmaking Power
  (PDF 73K)
  
  
• Appendix C: Creation of Measure of Household Economic Status
  (PDF 60K)
  
  
• References
  (PDF 57K)