Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture and Household Food Insecurity in Nigeria

Lack of gender parity in access to agricultural resources and services adversely influences women’s productivity and subsequently the food security status of their households. The study analysed the effects of women empowerment on food insecurity status of Nigerian households using secondary data from the 2018/2019 General Household Survey (GHS). Information from 448 households with consistent information were used to construct the Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI) and Household Hunger Scale (HHS) Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, probit regression and IV-ordered probit regression models. Results showed that 93.4% of the women were disempowered, while 47.4 percent of men were disempowered. The overall Gender Parity Index was 0.606 with about 17.1 percent of the women having high gender parity, while more than half did not have gender parity with the primary male in their households. However, less than a quarter of the women were empowered in the five domains, about half (49.4%), 57.1%, 45.6% and 44.5% of households that experienced no hunger, mild hunger, moderate hunger and severe hunger, respectively, had disempowered women. About 50.6% had no hunger, 42.9% had mild hunger, 54.4% had moderate hunger and 55.5% had severe hunger among the empowered women’s households. Increasing women empowerment in agriculture reduced the incidence of severe food insecurity by 4.0%. Being a female-headed household, age and high literacy level of household, head significantly reduced the probability of severe food insecurity among the households.