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Agricultural development projects increasingly aim to improve health and nutrition outcomes, often by engaging women. Although evidence shows such projects can improve women's and children's health and nutrition and empower women, little is known about their impacts on women's health- and nutrition-related agency and the extent to which impacts emerge through women's empowerment, largely due to a lack of instruments that measure the dimensions of women's agency that are directly relevant to health and nutrition outcomes. We developed an optional, complementary module for the project-level women's empowerment in agriculture index (pro- WEAI) to measure health- and nutrition-related agency (pro-WEAI + HN). Our method for developing related indicators used data collected from six agricultural development programmes implemented across Bangladesh, Burkina Faso and Mali (pooled sample = 12,114) and applied psychometric analysis (exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis) and the Alkire-Foster methodology. Results revealed seven indicators covering women's agency in the areas of her own health and diet; her health and diet during pregnancy; her child's diet; breastfeeding and weaning; purchasing food and health products; and acquiring food and health products. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis revealed measurement invariance across contexts and samples. Tests of association (Cramer's V) and redundancy suggest that the pro-WEAI + HN indicators measured aspects of agency that are distinct from the core pro-WEAI. The uptake of these indicators in studies of nutrition-sensitive agricultural development projects may strengthen the evidence on how such programming can enhance women's empowerment to improve health and nutrition outcomes for themselves and their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Street harassment against women is an understudied form of gender‐based violence that severely limits women's safety and freedoms. One potential way of addressing street harassment is directly intervening against it, that is, the woman experiencing harassment confronts the perpetrator. However, this may be difficult to do in contexts where harassment is pervasive. In the context of a grassroots women's empowerment organisation in Dhaka, Bangladesh, I examined the relationship between women's positions in the social network structure of a group that espouses a norm of speaking up against street harassment, and their levels of displaying this behaviour. I hypothesised that an individual's network centrality would be associated with their engagement in behaviours that are prescribed by the group social norm; specifically, speaking up against street harassment. This hypothesis was not supported. However, exploratory analyses indicated that network centrality was a significant (negative) predictor of the participant's tendency to remove herself from the situation when harassed and a significant positive predictor of self‐efficacy for intervening against street harassment. This indicates that position in the network may play a role in confronting street harassment, though not through originally hypothesised mechanisms. Theoretical and pragmatic implications of these findings for engaging in intervention against street harassment are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of maternal education on child mortality in Bangladesh by exploiting quasi‐experimental variations in the duration of exposure to a school stipend project for identification. Results from the instrumental variable estimation indicate that an additional year of maternal schooling reduces both under‐five and infant mortality by about 20 percent. The findings are statistically significant and robust to a number of model specifications, including survival models controlling for right censoring of child mortality. Analysis of potential mechanisms suggests that maternal education reduces child mortality through greater wealth and literacy, positive assortative mating, lower fertility, delayed marriage and childbearing, greater health‐related knowledge, better health‐seeking behaviors, and female empowerment, but not through female employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This comparative case study uses qualitative data to explore and analyze the institutional obstacles that women in reserved seats face to their political empowerment in the Gram Panchayat in India and the Union Parishad in Bangladesh. The findings reveal that women in reserved seats in both countries confront some fundamental institutional barriers, such as a masculine model of politics, lack of political party support, as well as lack of power and resources. Indian women face serious problems—the inclusion of ex-officio members, the rotational system, bureaucratic dominance, and partisan elections—whereas Bangladeshi women suffer from the unequal distribution of reserved seats under a quota policy and lack of clarity in rules, power, and provisions. A lack of financial resources limits the effective participation of women members in the decision-making process in both countries. Further institutional reforms are vital to ensure women's political empowerment through reserved seats in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global discourses have advocated women's empowerment as a means to reduce their own's food insecurity, which is also key development challenges in Bangladesh. However, little empirical research has conducted on this issue, especially in the rural area of Bangladesh. Therefore, the present study was conducted to examine the relationship of six domains of women's empowerment with their food security in rural Bangladesh using a partial least square structural equation modelling approach. Our empirical analysis indicates that women's accesses to their legal and familial rights and decision‐making roles in households increase their bargaining power over the utilization of resources and to choices of food which significantly and negatively decrease their food insecurity. Moreover, information and communication technologies and infrastructure facilities also negatively and significantly associated with women's food insecurity. However, women's leadership has a negative but not significant effect on their food insecurity, as low self‐esteem rural women feel no ease in publicly addressing their inequalities. By understanding family composition from women's perceptions, the results from our research can assist policymakers to develop more suitable strategies to enhance the empowerment status of rural women and reduce their food insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between women's empowerment and women's nutrition is understudied. We aimed to elucidate this relationship by quantifying possible pathways between empowerment and dietary diversity among women in rural Bangladesh. In 2015, we conducted a cross-sectional survey of 2,599 married women ages 15-40 (median: 25) living in 96 settlements of Habiganj District, Bangladesh, as a baseline for the Food and Agricultural Approaches to Reducing Malnutrition trial. We collected data on women's empowerment (highest completed grade of schooling and agency), dietary diversity, and demographic factors, including household wealth. We used exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis on random split-half samples, followed by structural equation modelling, to test pathways from schooling, through domains of women's agency, to dietary diversity. Factor analysis revealed 3 latent domains of women's agency: social solidarity, decision-making, and voice with husband. In the adjusted mediation model, having any postprimary schooling was positively associated with voice with husband (β41 = .051, p = .010), which was positively associated with dietary diversity (β54 = .39, p = .002). Schooling also had a direct positive association with women's dietary diversity (β51 = .22, p < .001). Neither women's social solidarity nor decision-making mediated the relationship between schooling and dietary diversity. The link between schooling and dietary diversity was direct and indirect, through women's voice with husband but not through women's social solidarity or decision-making. In this population, women with postprimary schooling seem to be better able to negotiate improved diets for themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2015, the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, which include fostering gender equality and women's empowerment and ending hunger and malnutrition. To monitor progress and evaluate programmes that aim to achieve these goals, survey instruments are needed that can accurately assess related indicators. The project‐level Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro‐WEAI) is being developed to address the need for an instrument that is sensitive to changes in empowerment over the duration of an intervention. The pro‐WEAI includes new modules with previously untested survey questions, including a health and nutrition module (focused on women's agency in this area) and an intrahousehold relationships module. This study uses cognitive interviewing to identify how new survey questions might be misinterpreted and to understand what experiences women are referencing when they respond to these questions. This was undertaken with the goal of informing revision to the modules. The study was conducted in Bangladesh with women from nuclear, extended, and migrant‐sending households and from two regions of the country to identify difficulties with interpretation and response formulation across these groups. Findings revealed that questions were generally understood, but participants occasionally responded to the wrong part of the question, did not understand key phrases, or were uncomfortable with questions. The findings also suggested ways to revise the modules and strengthen the pro‐WEAI. The revised pro‐WEAI health and nutrition and intrahousehold relationships modules will advance the ability to measure changes in these domains and their relationship with the health and nutritional status of women and their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]