The Complexity of Measuring Women Empowerment and its Role in Nutritional Status of Bangladeshi Children

Abstract

Measuring the woman empowerment and its impact on various aspects of woman and child welfare is still an enigma. The same measures of woman empowerment may be utilized for analyzing its role in different aspects of welfare of household members. This is the reason that a number of studies have shown no significant effect of woman empowerment on household welfare. This chapter has discussed different measures of woman empowerment and has attempted to see the impact of woman empowerment measured by an index on nutritional status of children in Bangladesh. The Composite Index of Anthropometric Failure (CIAF) has been calculated from Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2007 (BDHS). The Binary logistic regression results have illustrated that the woman empowerment has no significant effect on child’s nutritional status. It may be conferred that measure of woman empowerment has some flaws. The other explanatory variables like child’s birth order and age, duration of breastfeeding, mother’s education, mother’s BMI, incidence of Diarrhea and fever, household wealth and number of children (5 or under 5 years) in the household have shown significant impact on nutritional status of children. For women empowerment a revised set of indicators related with child’s nutritional status (similarly other areas of woman and child welfare) is required, which may reveal its impact on nutritional status of children (and other areas of woman and child welfare).