University of Pretoria, Old College House, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa.
CARE Malawi, Pamodzi House, Off Presidential Drive, Lilongwe, Malawi.
BMC Public Health. 2022 Jul 20;22(1):1392. doi: 10.1186/s12889-022-13749-x.
Child malnutrition persists globally with men and women playing distinct roles to support children's nutrition. Women frequently carry the bulk of the workload related to food, care, and health, all of which are critical factors in child nutrition. For this reason, development efforts have emphasised women ignoring the potential role of men in supporting children's nutrition. This study sought to understand the different roles that Malawian men and women play in children's nutrition.
This qualitative was conducted in rural Central Malawi as part of a baseline study in 2017 for the CARE Southern Africa Nutrition Initiative. Seventy-six participants were interviewed, including 19 men and 57 women, using focus group discussions and in-depth interviews. We sought to understand the gender distribution of men's and women's roles and how these roles influence child nutrition.
We found that both men and women were involved in productive, reproductive, and community work. However, consistent with the literature, women carried a disproportionate workload in supporting child nutrition compared to men. Women's heavier workloads often prevented them from being able to meet children's food needs. Nevertheless, shifts in gender roles were observed in some of the sampled communities, with men taking up responsibilities that have been typically associated with women. These changes in gender roles, however, did not necessarily increase women's power within the household.
Traditional gender roles remain prevalent in the sampled communities. Women continue to be primarily responsible for the food, care, and health of the household. Women's heavy workloads prevent them from providing optimal care and nutrition for children. While efforts to advance gender equality by encouraging men to participate in child care and other household responsibilities appear to have had marginal success, the extent to which these efforts have successfully encouraged men to share power remains unclear. Improving gender equality and child nutrition will require efforts to redistribute gendered work and encourage men to move towards shared power with women over household decision-making and control over income.
全球儿童营养不良问题仍然存在，男性和女性在支持儿童营养方面发挥着不同的作用。女性经常承担与食物、照顾和健康相关的大部分工作，这些都是儿童营养的关键因素。出于这个原因，发展工作强调女性，而忽略了男性在支持儿童营养方面的潜在作用。本研究旨在了解马拉维男性和女性在儿童营养方面所扮演的不同角色。
这是一项在马拉维中部农村进行的定性研究，是 2017 年 CARE 南部非洲营养倡议基线研究的一部分。共有 76 名参与者接受了访谈，包括 19 名男性和 57 名女性，采用焦点小组讨论和深入访谈的方式。我们试图了解男性和女性角色的性别分布以及这些角色如何影响儿童营养。
我们发现，男性和女性都参与了生产性、生殖性和社区工作。然而，与文献一致的是，与男性相比，女性在支持儿童营养方面承担了不成比例的工作量。女性的工作量过大，往往使她们无法满足儿童的食物需求。尽管如此，在一些抽样社区观察到性别角色的转变，男性承担了通常与女性相关的责任。这些性别角色的变化并不一定增加了女性在家庭中的权力。
在抽样社区中，传统的性别角色仍然普遍存在。女性仍然主要负责家庭的食物、照顾和健康。女性的工作量过大，使她们无法为孩子提供最佳的照顾和营养。虽然通过鼓励男性参与儿童保育和其他家务来促进性别平等的努力似乎取得了一定的成效，但这些努力在多大程度上成功地鼓励男性分享权力仍不清楚。改善性别平等和儿童营养需要努力重新分配性别化的工作，并鼓励男性在家庭决策和对收入的控制方面与女性共同分享权力。
