Women’s empowerment boosts the gains in dietary diversity from agricultural technology adoption in rural Kenya

Kassie, M and Fisher, M and Muricho, G and Diiro, G (2020) Women’s empowerment boosts the gains in dietary diversity from agricultural technology adoption in rural Kenya. Food Policy (TSI). pp. 1-14. ISSN 0306-9192

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Abstract

Using new survey data from rural Kenya, this paper assesses the moderating effect of women’s empowerment on the relationship between agricultural technology adoption and women’s dietary diversity. We use a multiple treatment endogenous switching regression framework to control for potential endogeneity of women’s empowerment and technology adoption. We find that women’s empowerment has a positive and significant effect on the women’s dietary diversity score regardless of technology adoption status. We further show that women’s empowerment enhances the positive effects of technology adoption on women’s dietary diversity. Although technology adoption has a positive impact on women’s dietary diversity regardless of empowerment status, its effect is stronger for households with empowered vs. disempowered women. Study results suggest that individual and household welfare could be enhanced to a greater degree through interventions that promote women’s empowerment and technology adoption simultaneously rather than separately.

Item Type:	Article
Divisions:	Research Program : East & Southern Africa Research Program : Genetic Gains
CRP:	UNSPECIFIED
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Agriculture, Women’s empowerment, Technology adoption, Dietary diversity, Kenya
Subjects:	Others > Agriculture Others > Agriculture-Farming, Production, Technology, Economics Others > Gender Research Others > Kenya
Depositing User:	Mr Arun S
Date Deposited:	31 Aug 2020 06:52
Last Modified:	03 Sep 2020 03:41
URI:	http://oar.icrisat.org/id/eprint/11579
Official URL:	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2020.101957
Projects:	UNSPECIFIED
Funders:	UNSPECIFIED
Acknowledgement:	This research received financial support from the USAID Feed the Future IPM Innovation Lab, Virginia Tech (Agreement No. AID-OAA-L- 15-00001), Combating Arthropod Pests for Better Health, Food and Resilience to Climate Change (CAP-Africa) project funded by NORAD, and the Integrated Pest Management strategy to counter the threat of invasive fall armyworm to food security in eastern Africa (FAW-IPM) project funded by EU (Grant Number: DCI-FOOD/2018/402-634). We also acknowledge the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe) core support provided by the Department for International Development (DFID), UK, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), and the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and the Kenyan Government. We also thank Jackson Kimani of icipe for generating the map of the study area, the enumerators and supervisors for their dedication in conducting the fieldwork, the farmers for their time, and icipe Nairobi support staff for facilitating the filed survey logistic. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the donors or the authors’ institutions. The usual disclaimers apply.
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