Does Women’s Empowerment Matter for Household Food Security? Evidence From Northern Ghana

Abstract

The study seeks to analyze the effect of women’s empowerment on household food security in northern Ghana. Employing Random Effect and Generalized Estimating Equations on the two rounds of Feed the Future dataset, 2012 and 2015, the study measured women empowerment as the comparative years of schooling and decision making by women. Multivariate Decomposition was used to explain whether variations in food insecurity between gendered household types are due to differences in explained and/or unexplained variations. The study showed significant differences in food insecurity levels between male and female headed households. The finding revealed that improving women decision making at the household level will reduce food insecurity by 45%. The study therefore recommends that Ministry of Gender, Children and Social protection should educate male partners on the need for women’s decision making and also ensure the establishment of social groups for women.