Women Empowerment and Its Impact on Livelihood and Food Security of Households: A Review

Abstract

Rural women in India and several countries of South-East Asia play crucial and significant role in livestock rearing, agriculture and other allied activities, but their contribution has not been incentivized given the due place they deserve. They always remain invisible workers. Increasing demand for milk and animal products in recent years intensifies livestock rearing as profitable enterprise for women. Many development programmes that aim at alleviating poverty and improving investments in human capital consider women’s empowerment a crucial pathway to achieve impact and often target women as their main beneficiaries. Women across the world have often been seen as the primary caretakers in a household. Hence, the intra-household dynamics that determine allocation of resources and their impact on well-being are in a subject of analysis. It has been seen that households do not necessarily act in an unitary manner. While allocating resources, women and men have their preferences for allocating food and nonfood resources and may therefore be involved in distribution of these resources differently, based on their bargaining power within the household. This article reviews the linkage of women empowerment and household food security and ways to measure it for effectively targeting the policies for strengthening the household food security.