Tesafa Fentahun, Mulugeta Messay, Tsehay Solomon
Center for Food Security Studies, College of Development Studies, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia.
Agricultural Economics Department, College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia.
Heliyon. 2024 Dec 17;11(1):e41273. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e41273. eCollection 2025 Jan 15.
Agriculture has been recognized as a key sector to leverage for improved food security. Yet, the evidence on agriculture-gender linkages to food security is still scarce and winding. This study investigates the impact of women empowerment in agriculture on efficiency and food security of households and individuals. Cross-sectional data was collected from 245 women, 80 children and 250 households surveyed in Libokemem district, Ethiopia. Stochastic frontier model was used to determine the level and determinants of efficiency and generalized structural equation modeling to examine empowerment, efficiency and food security nexus. Around 33 % of households, 44 % of women and 28 % of children in the district were food insecure while 64 % of households had adequate levels of women empowerment and their efficiency in crop farming was 65.2 %. This suggests farmers have the potential to increase crop production by about 35 % at existing levels of inputs. Women are disempowered in two major domains including heavy workload and lack of voice in production decisions, which contributed to a marked level of disempowerment at 48 and 22 % respectively. The findings also revealed women empowerment improved dietary diversity and ensured food security for women, children and households. The interaction pathways helped enhance food diversification and better market orientation of farms encouraged these outcomes to increase among all aforementioned groups. However, the adverse implication of efficiency interaction proved to be stronger than its direct positive effect, the efficiency interaction pathway yielded net reduction of these outcomes across all groups. In conclusion, empowering women in agriculture does not just augment market orientation of farmers, it also improves food security of households and vulnerable individuals. This requires interventions specifically targeting those dimensions of disempowerment to increase empowerment to affect the agriculture-food-nutrition nexus positively. Some even suggest gender has a disconnecting/adverse effect on these linkages.
农业已被视为实现粮食安全改善的关键领域。然而，关于农业与性别和粮食安全之间联系的证据仍然稀少且不完整。本研究调查了农业领域妇女赋权对家庭和个人效率及粮食安全的影响。研究采用横断面数据，这些数据来自对埃塞俄比亚利博凯梅姆区245名妇女、80名儿童和250户家庭的调查。使用随机前沿模型确定效率水平及其决定因素，并运用广义结构方程模型检验赋权、效率和粮食安全之间的关系。该地区约33%的家庭、44%的妇女和28%的儿童粮食不安全，而64%的家庭妇女赋权水平充足，其作物种植效率为65.2%。这表明，在现有投入水平下，农民有潜力将作物产量提高约35%。妇女在两个主要领域缺乏权力，包括工作量大以及在生产决策中缺乏话语权，这两个方面导致的无权状况分别达到48%和22%，程度显著。研究结果还显示，妇女赋权改善了饮食多样性，确保了妇女、儿童和家庭的粮食安全。互动路径有助于增强食物多样化，农场更好地面向市场促使所有上述群体的这些成果增加。然而，效率互动的负面影响被证明强于其直接的积极影响，效率互动路径使所有群体的这些成果出现净减少。总之，在农业领域赋予妇女权力不仅能增强农民的市场导向，还能改善家庭和弱势群体的粮食安全。这需要针对那些导致无权状况的具体方面进行干预，以增强权能，从而对农业-粮食-营养关系产生积极影响。甚至有人认为性别对这些联系有脱节/不利影响。
