Gender inequality can be a cause as well as an effect of hunger and malnutrition. A program evaluation from four Asian countries indicated that agricultural training combined with nutrition education empowered women in their ability to offer healthy diets to their families through homestead gardening, while being associated with improved nutritional status. Farmer Field Schools are another practical example of how agricultural development can be both gender-and nutrition-sensitive and complementary to other health-based nutrition interventions. Gender and nutrition are often mainstreamed in Farmer Field Schools, including Junior Farmer Field Schools. There are plans to standardize this approach as part of greater efforts to maximize positive nutritional impact through agriculture.In addition to that, women assume managerial roles at these schools (e.g. presidents, treasurers) with the same frequency as the men. These schools not only directly empower women, but they also enable men to change their view on women. Against this backdrop, following pathways may be chosen to ensure nutritional security through gender mainstreaming, child care programmes and fisheries.
Pathway 1
Women’s participation in aquaculture may have certain effects on improving family nutritional status
Pathway 2
Encouraging women to paricipate in the fisheries related movements
Pathway 3
Organize picnic for collective feeding session for underweight and malnourished infants under the Positive Deviance (PD) approach, an intervention aimed at reducing malnutrition among children less than three years of age in West Bengal. For twelve days in a month, mothers with undernourished children may follow this regime. This is followed up by an 18-day break wherein care givers monitor the feeding practices in the respective child’s homes and record progress. Every month the malnourished child may be weighed and in most cases, mothers may find their children gaining weight between 100 and 600 gm. A pleasant surprise and a great moral booster for them
Pathway 4
The scope is for an improvement and expansion of food sources in the village school, which is a center of grassroots level in the remote areas.
Pathway 5:
In India there is a need to link Village (Panchayat) Ponds developed under National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS); Village Childcare Centers (Anganwadi) and Village Schools and Earn while you learn for teachers, Women Self Help Groups, Farmers Friends , Farmers Field Schools and students.
Dr. Shekhar N Ojha