Women empowerment and food security: Empirical evidence from Malawi

Abstract

Women empowerment is a multidimensional concept, encompassing different aspects such as freedom to make vital decisions, access to economic resources, labor market access and political participation. Evidence suggests that gender equality and women empowerment is an effective tool for enhancing food security. Despite extensive literature on both women empowerment and food security, their relationship remains opaque and mainly unexplored for Malawi. In this paper, we investigate how, and to what extent women empowerment influence food security in Malawi. Based on the theoretical framework of WEAI, we evaluate relationship between empowerment and food security for 256 dual adult households in Chipewa and Chimbuka villages under Traditional Authority Nyoka in Mchinji district in Malawi. Empowerment was measured by a combination of two sub-indexes namely the five domains of empowerment index (5DE) comprising (1) production decisions, (2) access and decisions on productive resources, (3) control of use of income, (4) leadership through group membership, and (5) A2I as well as the Gender Parity Index (GPI) comprising the percentage of women who have not yet achieved empowerment and the average empowerment gap. Food security was examined using Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS). We examined the relationship between empowerment and household food security. Our results indicate that the majority of the population in the study area are disempowered and food insecure irrespective of gender with half the population being severely food insecure. We then evaluate the correlation between each of the five domains of empowerment and food security for male and female. Amongst men, higher empowerment in terms of resources, A2I, income and leadership increases food security. On the other hand, it is only production domain of empowerment that is positive and statistically significant for women. The next step is to develop the econometric model to decipher the relationship further.