A study by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) notes that the increasing involvement of women in India’s workforce gives a chance to improve diets in households. The study, co-authored by Nikita Sangwan from Centre for Research on the Economics of Climate, Food, Energy and Environment (CECFEE), and Dr Shalander Kumar of ICRISAT, used a unique data set of 832 rural households from 18 villages from the semi-arid tropics of India. These included villages from the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. The said data was accumulated from the same households during 2009-20014 across three seasons.
The study further takes note of the upward trend in the number of women participating in the workforce. It says that it can increase the income of a household, leading to an improvement in dietary diversity. The extra funds simply enables the household to purchase a more varied food basket. That said, the study notes that the extra time contributed by women at work does not have adverse effects of their health.
As per the study, unpaid work, much like paid work, also has a positive effect on dietary diversity. This is because the number of food groups women produce for household consumption is higher in such cases. In fact, the study suggests that a higher number of workdays for women having paid work in turn improved the home-produced dietary diversity alongside the diversity brought in by the increased income.
Image used for representational purposes only.