WEBINAR: Women’s Diets, Roles in Agriculture, and Nutrition: Findings from Nepal, Uganda and Tanzania

2 September 2020. Women's Diets, Roles in Agriculture, and Nutrition: Findings from Nepal, Uganda and Tanzania

Women’s roles in agriculture has been widely proposed as key to achieving improved maternal and child health and nutrition. In low-middle income countries (LMICs), rural households depend on agriculture for their livelihood, in which women actively participate, while also being more vulnerable than men to economic and food availability stresses. 

As large-scale, multisectoral programs in LMICs focus on sustainable agricultural development by considering women’s roles and gender equity in agriculture, it is critical to understand the impact of these programs on women’s empowerment and decision making, production diversity and dietary diversity. Research supported by the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Nutrition in Nepal, Tanzania and Uganda investigates apparent influences of gender, diversity and specificity of household food production, and food purchasing patterns on women’s dietary diversity and adequacy. Women’s empowerment, in terms of ownership and decision making in cash crops, is examined as a means to improve child and maternal nutrition and health outcomes. 

• Moderator:Dr. Eileen Kennedy - Eileen Kennedy is a former dean of the Friedman School. 
• Dr. Keith West - George G. Graham Professor of Infant and Child Nutrition, and Director of the Sight and Life Global Nutrition Research Institute in the Department of International Health at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. 
• Dr. Nassul Kabunga -  an Evaluation Research Economist affiliated to the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University. Nassul Kabunga holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics and Rural Development from Goettingen University (in Germany), an MSc from Hannover University (in Germany), and a B.Sc. from Makerere University Kampala (Uganda). 
• Alexandra Bellows - Alexandra Bellows is a nutrition PhD student in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.