Revisiting the Linkage of Women’s Decision Making in Agriculture and Nutrition at Micro Level: A Cross-sectional Study from Rural India

This study critically analysed the association of nutritional intake—measured by individual dietary diversity scores (IDDS), with women’s decision-making in agriculture—measured by the Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) (modified). The study included 578 dual agricultural households in rural India from cross-sectional primary data collected in 2019 through a probability-proportionate randomised stratified sampling survey. The individual ‘empowerment scores’ were derived from the sub-indices of a contextualised ad hoc WEAI. A modified Wagstaff concentration index titled empowerment ranked concentration index (ErCI) of ‘adequate’ IDDS was estimated with the WEAI ‘empowerment scores’ as underlying rankings. Results showed an average 62.55% of the women with inadequate input in decisions in 43.99% of the domains—mainly due to lack of leisure, inadequate leadership and low input on production decisions. Poor nutrition (low-IDDS) was concentrated among disempowered individuals (ErCI: −0.180; p < .001). However, low IDDS concentration among disempowered was higher in the households at higher asset classes indicating that the influence of women empowerment on nutrition varies with other structural barriers such as wealth. At a macro policy level, it is recommended that combining nutrition initiatives with women empowerment initiatives may show better results for wealthier households. At a more operational micro level, the study recommends a need to look for contextualised metrics of empowerment to capture specific inadequacies relevant to the development environment.