Is greater decisionmaking power of women associated with reduced gender discrimination in South Asia?
Author InfoSmith, Lisa C. Byron, Elizabeth M. Abstract “Recent research has shown that improving women’s decisionmaking power relative to men’s within households leads to improvements in a variety of well-being outcomes for children. In South Asia, where the influence of women’s power is particularly strong, these outcomes include children’s nutritional status and the quality of feeding and health care practices. Focusing on nutritional status, this paper presents the results of a study investigating whether increases in women’s power have a stronger positive influence on the nutritional status of their daughters than their sons. If so, then increasing women’s power not only improves the well-being of children as a group, but also serves as a force to reduce long-standing discrimination that undermines female capabilities in many important areas of life as well as human and economic development in general. To investigate this issue, the study draws on Demographic and Health Survey data
