A Call for Better Research on the Impact of Women’s Empowerment on Child Nutrition

Dr. Vicky Santoso has published her first dissertation paper! Our thanks to co-authors Prof Rachel Kerr, Prof John Hoddinott, and Northwestern undergraduate researchers Priya Garigipati & Sophia Olmos for their contributions. We reviewed 62 studies examining the relation between more than 200 unique indicators of empowerment and child nutrition outcomes. We found that these indicators were “inconsistent” and “limited in scope,” and often did capture “dimensions and domains relevant to child nutrition”.

The TLDR? Research to quantify the relationship between women’s empowerment and child nutrition needs to be more explicit in articulating and measuring pathways between women’s empowerment and child nutrition.