Gender and food systems: Avenues for transformation?
In this chapter, we build upon the gender and food systems framework developed by Njuki and colleagues (2022) to assess the associations between measures of women’s empowerment and specific food systems outcomes. Among the many ways to measure women’s empowerment (see Elias et al. 2021 for a review), we focus on the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), an internationally validated multidimensional decomposable index (Alkire et al. 2013; Malapit et al. 2019; Malapit et al. 2017) that assesses both individual empowerment and household-level gender parity. We use measures of improved nutrition and food security, economic and livelihood outcomes, environmental outcomes, and well-being as our key food system outcomes. We then present our findings from a synthesis of mixed-methods evaluations of interventions with women’s empowerment objectives to draw out implications for programs and policy. We conclude with policy recommendations to support gender-transformative food systems transformation.