Women’s empowerment is one of the nutrition sensitive intervention for addressing child undernutrition. Literature mainly from Asian countries indicates the existence of an association between women empowerment and child feeding. However limited literature exist to show the association between child diet diversity and women empowerment in Zambia. This study was designed to assess the association between women’s empowerment dimensions and child dietary diversity among children 6 to 23 months old in Zambia. The study used secondary data collected for the 2013-2014 Zambia demographic health survey. The analysis targeted 3136 pair of the youngest child age 6 to 23 months old and married women age 15 to 49 years old living with their partners. Women’s empowerment dimensions were identified from the data using principle component analysis. Multiple regression analysis was used to assess the associations between the women’s empowerment dimensions and child diet diversity while controlling for the covariates. The study found that none of the three empowerment dimensions were associated with child diet diversity. However, a positive association was found between women’s decision making empowerment dimension and feeding children on dairy products, and also a negative association was established between women’s support for violence against women dimension and feeding children on starchy foods. These results suggests that women’s empowerment programmes have a weak link with child diet diversity which might be associated with the limited integration of child nutrition programmes in women’s empowerment programmes in the country. The study therefore, fills the knowledge gap on areas that should be targeted when linking nutrition programmes with women’s empowerment programmes. The results suggests that women’s empowerment programmes should strengthen women’s decision making autonomy and women’s self-esteem to contribute effectively to child diet diversity improvement.
Downloads:
Download Category:
