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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

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Emily Schmidt

Emily Schmidt is a Senior Research Fellow in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit. Her most recent research explores household livelihood strategies in Papua New Guinea, including linkages between agriculture, poverty, and nutrition outcomes among rural smallholder farmers.

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Nutrition, Diets, and Health

Archis Banerjee

Research Analyst

Bio

Archis Banerjee is a Research Analyst in the Nutrition, Diets, and Health Unit. He joined IFPRI in 2023 under the CGIAR Research Initiative on Transforming Agri-Food Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA). His research interests include food security, nutrition, poverty, and the economics of education. He has worked on studies examining the impact of climatic shocks on household well-being; the connection between and temporal trends in the prevalence and determinants of child undernutrition; the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the food security status of rural households; and the effect of household wealth on the reverse gender educational gap in Bangladesh.

Prior to joining IFPRI, Archis worked as a Senior Program and Research Analyst at Helen Keller International. He received his bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka, India, and his master’s degree in Development Studies (specializing in Development Economics) from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Nutrition, Diets, and Health

Publications

Resource thumbnail

Preprint

Intrahousehold dynamics in South Asia: Understanding the relationships between women’s empowerment, task sharing, decision making, and diets among women

2025Kumar, Neha; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Manohar, Swetha; Banerjee, Archis; Gupta, Shivani; Chauhan, Alka; Patwardhan, Sharvari; Koirala, Uma
Details

Intrahousehold dynamics in South Asia: Understanding the relationships between women’s empowerment, task sharing, decision making, and diets among women

Despite the growing evidence on the role of women in agriculture and nutrition, interlinkages between empowerment among women, gendered task allocation, and nutrition are rarely studied together. Using data from the Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA), a household survey that used a plate-to-farm assessment approach in three countries (Bangladesh, India and Nepal), the paper investigates the associations between empowerment of women, gendered task allocation, decision-making among women, and diets among women. Our findings reveal complex and context-specific differences in associations between task allocation, decision-making and empowerment among. While agency in decision-making among women is positively associated with empowerment in all three country contexts, associations between gendered task allocation and empowerment vary. The share of tasks performed by females, particularly in agriculture and food preparation) is positively associated with empowerment among women, but the proportion of tasks shared equally between males and females does not necessarily empower women. Gendered task allocation and empowerment among women are not significantly associated with diets of women in the three countries, owing to the greater importance of broader socio-economic and context-specific factors such as wealth, education, and regional factors in explaining the variance in dietary outcomes. These findings highlight the need to take a holistic approach that addresses gender norms and household resource constraints to improving empowerment of women, while also addressing local accessibility/availability of nutritious foods to enhance the quality of diets of women.

Year published

2025

Authors

Kumar, Neha; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Manohar, Swetha; Banerjee, Archis; Gupta, Shivani; Chauhan, Alka; Patwardhan, Sharvari; Koirala, Uma

Citation

Kumar, Neha; Quisumbing, Agnes; Manohar, Swetha; Banerjee, Archis; Gupta, Shivani; Chauhan, Alka; Patwardhan, Sharvari; and Koirala, Uma. 2025. Intrahousehold dynamics in South Asia: understanding the relationships between women’s empowerment, task sharing, decision making, and diets among women. MedRxiv Preprint. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.08.25320196

Country/Region

Bangladesh; India; Nepal

Keywords

Southern Asia; Asia; Intrahousehold Relations; Decision Making; Women’s Empowerment; Diet; Agriculture; Household Surveys; Gender Norms

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.08.25320196 Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Preprint

Resource thumbnail

Working Paper

Task or time? Comparing methods for measuring the gender distribution of work

2024Banerjee, Archis; Kumar, Neha; Quisumbing, Agnes R.
Details

Task or time? Comparing methods for measuring the gender distribution of work

There is growing evidence that gender disparities in the distribution of paid and unpaid work impose constraints on women’s well-being and livelihoods, reducing access to paid employment, and time for education, leisure, and social activities. Yet, gender disparities in unpaid work often go undiagnosed by traditional household surveys. While time-use surveys are well-suited for measuring unpaid work, they are often expensive to administer and take substantial amounts of survey time, leading to respondent fatigue, particularly in multi-topic surveys where other outcomes are also being collected. In this paper, we compare data collected using the task allocation module in the Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA) integrated household survey and the time-use module in the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) survey. We begin by describing the methods used to collect the data in each of the surveys. We present an overview of the characteristics of the study sites in the TAFSSA integrated survey and sites in the same countries where the WEAI data were collected. We then present comparable data from each of the two methods. The findings confirm the gendered patterns in involvement in different activities as measured by both survey modules. While women’s participation in agricultural activities is high across Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, the amount of time they spend on agricultural activities is less than that spent by men. Both survey tools confirm that women undertake most of the food preparation-related activities, and men contribute through shopping/purchasing food.

Year published

2024

Authors

Banerjee, Archis; Kumar, Neha; Quisumbing, Agnes R.

Citation

Banerjee, Archis; Kumar, Neha; and Quisumbing, Agnes R. 2024. Task or time? Comparing methods for measuring the gender distribution of work. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2277. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/152347

Country/Region

Bangladesh; India; Nepal

Keywords

Southern Asia; Asia; Time Use Patterns; Households; Gender; Unpaid Work; Women’s Empowerment; Surveys; Gender Norms

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Working Paper