Floriane Clement
email: floriane.clement@inra.fr

Marie-Charlotte Buisson

Stephanie Leder

Soumya Balasubramanya

Panchali Saikia

Ram Bastakoti

Emma Karki

Barbara Van Koppen

Soumya Balasoubramanya

From women's empowerment to food security: Revisiting global discourses through a cross-country analysis

Keywords: food security, women's empowerment, gender, intersectionality, multi-country analysis, mixed-methods study

de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Introduction

Global food security debates have framed gender equality as an effective tool to support agricultural and economic growth and enhance food security (ADB, 2013;[START_REF] Duflo | Women Empowerment and Economic Development[END_REF] -a narrative that particularly resonates with increasing patterns of male out-migration and the socalled 'feminisation of agriculture'. Many studies have evidenced strong linkages between gender inequality and food insecurity, notably in the case of poor and marginalised women who have less access than men to critical resources for agricultural livelihoods [START_REF] Quisumbing | Promising approaches to address the needs of poor female farmers: Resources, constraints, and interventions[END_REF] or in respect to how women's disempowerment affects maternal and child nutrition (Malapit et al., 2015a;Malapit and Quisumbing, 2015;Nisbett et al., in press;[START_REF] Sraboni | Women's Empowerment in Agriculture: What Role for Food Security in Bangladesh?[END_REF].

Food security discourses envision that if women have similar access to productive resources as men, agricultural productivity will increase, thereby contributing to enhanced food security, e.g. "Increasing women's access to land, livestock, education, financial services, extension, technology and rural employment would boost their productivity and generate gains in terms of agricultural production, food security, economic growth and social welfare" (FAO, 2011). Some would argue that this instrumental narrative represents a strategic and necessary step to attract the attention of international development agencies and policy-makers to gender inequalities in agriculture globally. Indeed it has to some extent contributed to the inclusion of women's empowerment components in food security programmes, deploying interventions that have specifically targeted women. It has also been visible in the monitoring and evaluation of these programmes, and in particular in the development and implementation of the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), a tool designed to measure the impact of USAID programmes under the Feed the Future initiative [START_REF] Alkire | The Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index[END_REF].

Yet the operationalization of this narrative linking women's empowerment through access to productive resources to increased food security has so far largely failed to deliver on its promises, both in terms of actual investments dedicated to women's empowerment, and resulting outcomes on gender equality and enhanced food security [START_REF] Galie | From Gender Analysis to Transforming Gender Norms. Using empowerment pathways to enhance gender equity and food security in Tanzania[END_REF]. Some scholars remark that such policy discourse promotes a narrow and apolitical vision of women's empowerment [START_REF] Galie | From Gender Analysis to Transforming Gender Norms. Using empowerment pathways to enhance gender equity and food security in Tanzania[END_REF], which is symptomatic of development programmes in general. The latter have often focused on economic empowerment without necessarily addressing the norms, institutions and broader political economic structures that (re)produce gender inequalities in the first place [START_REF] Batliwala | Gender Myths that Instrumentalise Women: A view from the Indian frontline[END_REF][START_REF] Cornwall | Introduction: Negotiating empowerment[END_REF][START_REF] Kabeer | Gender equality and women's empowerment. A critical analysis of the third Millenium Development Goal[END_REF][START_REF] O'laughlin | A Bigger Piece of a Very Small Pie: Intrahousehold Resource Allocation and Poverty Reduction in Africa[END_REF]. [START_REF] Stevano | The Limits of Instrumentalism: Informal Work and Gendered Cycles of Food Insecurity in Mozambique[END_REF] also points to the structural gendered forms of deprivation that generate food insecurity such as lack of secure employment and conflicting labour demands.

Our study aims at bringing fresh insights on the relationships between women's empowerment and food security through an intersectional perspective and a mixed methods approach across multiple countries. Intersectionality refers to "the ways in which forms of social difference (race, class, gender, disability, among identities) 'add up' to circumscribe how people see themselves and how they are seen in the social milieu, leading to various forms of discrimination or privilege" [START_REF] Butler | The psychic life of power[END_REF][START_REF] Nightingale | Socionature Approach to adaptation. Political transition, intersectionality, and climate change programmes in Nepal[END_REF]. We first explored women's empowerment and food security relationships relying on quantitative data from three household surveys conducted in Bangladesh, Nepal and Tajikistan. We then critically reflect on the findings of our statistical analysis, based on qualitative data collected in two communities in Nepal. The communities were selected from project interventions under the same development project and region as where the household survey was conducted, in order to link the qualitative data analysis to the quantitative data analysis.

Conceptual framework

We largely draw on Kabeer's empowerment framework (1999) for our analysis. [START_REF] Kabeer | Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the measurement of women's empowerment[END_REF] defines power as one's ability to make choices and distinguishes three inter-related dimensions to the process of empowerment: resources (material and non-material, i.e. human and social), agency and achievements. Agency does not only encompass observable actions but also the motivation for these actions and the meanings given to them. We also include under agency one's ability to influence through positions and identities. For instance, in some societies, the elder man can influence the actions or behaviours of his family members solely by his mere position and identity, without any verbal actions or decisions.

We also reckon that power does not necessarily lie in individuals but is also pervasive in the form of what Bourdieu coined 'doxa' (1977[START_REF] Kabeer | Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the measurement of women's empowerment[END_REF] or the latent form of power [START_REF] Lukes | Power: A radical view[END_REF] that ensures acceptance of domination: what appears normal and natural is not contested or even perceived unfair. This pervasive form of power was particularly evidenced in Foucault's writings on how power is embedded in daily practices, institutions and discourses (e.g. [START_REF] Foucault | Naissance de la prison[END_REF]. In feminist studies, this is what [START_REF] Rowlands | A Word of the Times, but What Does it Mean? Empowerment in the Discourse and Practice of Development[END_REF] refers to as 'internalised oppression' whereby power is exercised through the mere acceptance of dominant norms, rules, relationships and the development of a belief that these are normal, just and legitimate. This leads us to add the concept of 'critical consciousness', developed by [START_REF] Freire | Pedagogy of the Opressed[END_REF] to the three other dimensions of empowerment, as proposed earlier by other gender and development scholars [START_REF] Cornwall | Women's Empowerment: What works[END_REF][START_REF] Cornwall | Power and Knowledge[END_REF][START_REF] Goldman | Innovative Grassroots NGOS and the Complex Processes of Women's Empowerment: An Empirical Investigation from Northern Tanzania[END_REF][START_REF] Leder | Linking Women's Empowerment and their Resilience[END_REF]. Critical consciousness denotes one's ability to realize and react on the structures and other forms of power that produce inequalities and exclusion. In this perspective, reflective argumentation skills are a pre-condition for transformative change and sustainable development [START_REF] Leder | Transformative Pedagogic Practice. Education for Sustainable Development in Indian Geography Education on Water Conflicts[END_REF].

To define food security, we rely on the FAO definition: « Food security, at the individual, household, national, regional and global levels [is achieved] when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life » [START_REF] Fao | Rome Declaration on Food Security[END_REF]. We distinguish between food insecurity as a state and as a process (as Kabeer proposes for poverty, see [START_REF] Kabeer | Gender, poverty, and inequality: a brief history of feminist contributions in the field of international development[END_REF]. Food insecurity as a state is what is observed at a given point in time, whereas food insecurity as a process reflects the mechanisms and structural causes that create food insecurity. We expect that food insecurity as a state affects and is perceived by men and women differently [START_REF] Coates | He said, she said": who should speak for households about experiences of food insecurity in Bangladesh?[END_REF] while food insecurity as a process is created through distributive and procedural mechanisms that exclude men and women differently.

In our quantitative analysis, we particularly examine the linkages between agency and achievements, as it has been, until recently, relatively less studied than the relationship between resources and achievements in the gender and food security literature. Food security is the broad achievement considered here, but we mostly considered food availability and, to some extent, food access, among the four following elements of food security: availability; access; safety, nutrition and sanitation; stability and environment. Following the entitlement approach, we recognise the various mechanisms which people draw upon to acquire food, as well as their ability to draw on multiple mechanisms and diversify risk, understood as 'capabilities' [START_REF] Sen | Poverty and Famine: An essay on entitlement and deprivation[END_REF]. A central assumption in our approach is to posit that these capabilities are shaped not only by gender but also by other social markers and identities, such as age, caste, class, ethnicity, religion etc. These do not simply 'add up' to each other but intersect to form new forms of vulnerability to food insecurity. Empowerment is a key process that allows entitlements to be realised, secured or claimed (Dre ze and [START_REF] Dre Ze | Hunger and Public Action[END_REF]. In a food sovereignty perspective, empowerment is also critical for smallholder farmers to gain the right to control over food production and define their own food and agriculture policy [START_REF] Patel | Food sovereignty: Power, gender, and the right to food[END_REF].

Data and methodology

Quantitative data collection and analysis

We used the quantitative data collected through a household survey across three different projects conducted in Bangladesh, Nepal and Tajikistan. In the case of Nepal, the survey was designed by the research team for the purpose of the impact evaluation of a development project implemented by an international non-governmental organisation (INGO). The surveys for these three projects did not specifically aim at exploring relationships between food security and women's empowerment but collected data on agricultural practices, water management and on different components of food security and women's empowerment/agency (Table 1). We therefore used a heterogeneous set of variables as indicators of women's empowerment and food security. Our intention was not to compare results across countries but rather to explore different types of relationships between empowerment and food security across a wide range of contexts.

In the case of Bangladesh and Tajikistan, the variables considered for women's empowerment are largely related to agency in the form of decision-making. For Nepal, we used the indicators of a more elaborate index, drawing on the WEAI developed by IFPRI and OPHI [START_REF] Alkire | The Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index[END_REF]. The WEAI is an aggregate index based on individual level data on men and women within the same households. The WEAI comprises of two sub-indexes: 1) the five domains of empowerment (5DE); and 2) the gender parity index (GPI). The 5DE sub-index attempts to assess the roles of women in agriculture as well as their level of engagement in this sector to reflect their status of empowerment in five domains of empowerment: (1) decisions over agricultural production, (2) access to and decision-making power over productive resources, (3) control over use of income, (4) leadership in the community, and (5) time use [START_REF] Alkire | The Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index[END_REF]. We used the Abbreviated WEAI (A-WEAI) for the purpose of the project impact evaluation. The A-WEAI was developed as a shorter and streamlined version of the WEAI and includes six indicators under the 5DE: inputs in productive decisions, ownership of assets, access to and decisions on credit, control over use of income, group membership and workload. We used for our analysis, the indicator variables for whether the primary female in the household is empowered (binary) (Malapit et al., 2015b), as we felt that considering different domains of empowerment would allow a more nuanced analysis than if we used the aggregate A-WEAI scores.

For food security, we relied on a mix of indicators related to self-consumption strategies, likelihood of facing a food shortage, coping strategies in case of food shortage and malnutrition anthropometric indicators (wasting, stunting and under-weight for children under two years old) (Table 1). These are broadly related to food availability, food access and actual undernutrition.

To quantify the correlation between the women's empowerment variables and the food security indicators, we used multivariate regressions to control for household-level attributes that may conjointly affect the food consumption behaviour, food shortages as well as the choice of a coping strategy. Ordinary Least Square regressions are used when the dependant variable is continuous. In the case of binary dependant variables, Logit regressions were preferred and marginal effects reported. Finally, for censored dependant variables, as the number of months, results from Tobit regression are presented. All tables and figures showing the results from the quantitative analysis are provided in the Appendix.

In the same time, we explored to which extent our indicators of women's empowerment and food security were associated with household-level socio-economic indicators. We used three types of socio-economic indicators: wealth, class (land ownership), female-headed household and we added one indicator related to caste and ethnicity for Nepal. Poverty has been found to aggravate gender inequalities, notably in terms of nutrition in Bangladesh [START_REF] Kabeer | Gender, poverty, and inequality: a brief history of feminist contributions in the field of international development[END_REF][START_REF] Sraboni | Women's Empowerment in Agriculture: What Role for Food Security in Bangladesh?[END_REF]. Land ownership is a strong determinant of both wealth and food security in the South Asian context particularly -it was not included in the analysis for Tajikistan, where land is less a limiting factor for food security. Female headship is also a recurrent indicator of how gender inequalities intersect with poverty across countries [START_REF] Kabeer | Gender, poverty, and inequality: a brief history of feminist contributions in the field of international development[END_REF] and with food security (ADB, 2013). In the case of Nepal, Dalit women (Dalits are former untouchables and lowest in the social hierarchy) are particularly vulnerable to poverty and food insecurity (UNDP, 2014), as they face double discrimination and marginalisation [START_REF] Bennett | Policy reform and culture change: Contesting gender, caste, and ethnic exclusion in Nepal[END_REF]. Similarly Janajati, who include diverse indigenous groups in the hills and Terai-Madhesh region of Nepal, have historically suffered from socio-economic and political exclusion and marginalisation. Adult main male and female decision-makers for The characteristics of the households sampled are presented in Table 2. In Bangladesh, households rely on both farming and aquaculture. Rice is the staple crop whereas households also grow vegetables in the homestead garden. In Nepal, households cultivate rice or rice and wheat depending on the location, whereas women often cultivate vegetables in home gardens, primarily for home consumption. The surplus sold on the market provides them a small income, which is usually used for school fees or petty household expenses [START_REF] Clement | When Water Security Programmes Seek to Empower Women: Case study from Western Nepal[END_REF]. As visible in the proportion of female-headed households, migration is an important risk diversification strategy in Nepal, with the hope to reduce food insecurity through sending remittance that enable other members of the household to obtain food. In Tajikistan, home gardens are an important production system for the household. Earlier, they were used to cultivate vegetables and fruits to augment the family's diet but recently they have also emerged as a source of cash income through sale of surplus.

Qualitative data collection and analysis

The qualitative component of our study considers food insecurity as a process, exploring some of the structural causes that create food insecurity.

In Nepal, the qualitative study was conducted between November 2015 and May 2016 as part of the BRACED project under which also the quantitative data were collected. We selected two communities in Dadeldhura and Doti districts, based on the diversity of caste and ethnic groups among the beneficiaries and different types of interventions conducted.

The INGO envisioned in this project multiple pathways linking women's empowerment and increased food security: women's enhanced access to water for both domestic and productive uses and women's membership in vegetable farming groups would allow them engaging in irrigated homestead vegetable gardening. Vegetable production would in turn contribute to a more diverse diet and enhanced maternal and child nutrition, while the sale of vegetable products would increase household income and thus its resilience to external climatic shocks.

The objective of our study was to capture local meanings of empowerment and understand the causal processes and mechanisms that link women's empowerment in agriculture to household food security and resilience to shocks.

The research team started with a transect walk, village resource mapping and a participatory power ranking to understand social hierarchies and differentiated access to natural resources in the community. Then, 5-6 key informant interviews were conducted in each community and several focus group discussions (FGDs) disaggregated by sex and household power category on empowerment. Eight women were selected based on their household power category covering high, middle and low power categories, to conduct and discuss power-self rankings and jointly reflect on their own A-WEAI score. Lastly in-depth interviews were conducted with 12-15 women in each community to explore life histories, household livelihood strategies, project implementation outcomes, access to drinking water and irrigation facilities, group membership and access to credit, and involvement in household and community-level decision-making.

Results

Relationships between indicators of women's empowerment and food security

Self-consumption

In Bangladesh, results indicate that women's decision on how the agricultural production should be used (sold, self-consumed or stored) significantly determine the share of the vegetable harvest retained for self-consumption. However, their decision is not a determinant of the share of aman rice and fish kept for self-consumption (Table B1). This is in line with earlier research findings on women's role to ensure household food security in Bangladesh [START_REF] Sraboni | Women's Empowerment in Agriculture: What Role for Food Security in Bangladesh?[END_REF]) and traditional gendered division of family labour, with women having more labour input and control over homestead vegetable gardening and men more control over rice production, fishing and marketing of these products [START_REF] Rahman | Women's employment in Bangladesh agriculture: composition, determinants and scope[END_REF][START_REF] Sultana | Gender and Local Floodplain Management Institutions A case study from Bangladesh[END_REF].

In Nepal, results are mixed: when women are empowered in terms of access to and decisions about credit, a significantly larger share of both vegetable and cereal production is kept for home consumption (with cereal production and marketing usually under the male domain).

The relationship is the opposite for vegetable production when women were empowered in terms of control over the income (Table N1). This could be explained by the fact that homestead vegetable production and sales are often a significant -or the only -component of rural women's income in the sampled region -so the direction of the relationship might therefore be opposite than the one expected: when women sell a larger share of vegetables, they have more control over income.

In Tajikistan, women's decision-making only had a significant effect on the amount retained in the case of maize, which is used both for animal and human consumption: when women decide on the use of maize product, slightly less of the harvest is retained for home consumption (Table T1).

Access to food

In Bangladesh, decisions by women on the use of the agricultural produce and the use of the incomes from crop sales are significantly associated with a reduction of the number of months faced with food shortage, with acute food shortage and even the likelihood to face a food shortage (Table B2). Interestingly, the coefficients are higher for the decision on the incomes than for the decision on the produce.

In Nepal, we use information on crop productivity as a proxy of food availability. The relationship between women's decisions over income and wheat productivity is positive (Table N2). However the access to and decision about credit is negatively associated with wheat productivity. The relationship between women's empowerment and food availability and its direction is therefore unclear -but in line with earlier results on self-consumption.

Women's empowerment over credit is both significantly correlated with lower wheat productivity and a greater share of cereals kept for self-consumption.

Coping strategies

In Bangladesh, when women primarily take decisions on the use of agricultural produce, the likelihood to rely on cheap food is reduced by 8%, all things being equal and compared with other households. Similarly, the likelihood to eat stored seeds is reduced by 2% with women deciding the allocation of agricultural produce. The decision of women on the incomes from agriculture also reduce the probability of using a coping strategy, namely the use of cheap food (minus 19%), the reduction of food quantity (minus 11%) and the use of credit for purchasing food (minus 10%) (Table B3), results which are in line with the relationship with reduced food shortage.

Results are opposite in Tajikistan. In households where women are primarily responsible to determine the use of vegetables through the year, those households are likelier than others to rely on food shortage coping strategies that smoothen out the fall in consumption, such as relying on cheaper food (16% more likely), reducing the quantity of food intake in each meal during food shortfalls (12% more likely), or purchasing food on credit (8% more likely) (Table T2).

Undernutrition

In the case of Nepal, anthropometric measures have been collected for children under two years old. The access to and decisions about credit for women significantly reduce the likelihood for the children of the household to face stunting and underweight (Table N3).

To sum-up, our results suggest mixed and unexpected findings on the relationship between women's agency and food availability and access. The relationship varies in terms of type of agricultural product considered, type of decisions taken, type of indicator of empowerment, and across the three countries. To further our analysis, we explored how the relationships between women's empowerment and food security depend on socio-economic indicators across the three study countries. We therefore unpack 'women' as a category to explore how different types of social markers and identities affect how agency translates into achievements.

Unpacking the category of rural women farmers

Wealth and class

In Bangladesh, wealth is negatively and significantly associated with food shortage and use of almost all coping strategies. As expected, wealthier households are less likely to be food insecure and to rely on food coping strategies (Tables B2 andB3). Wealth is not significantly associated with the share of agricultural products kept for home consumption, whereas in Nepal, households from higher class (reflected in terms of area of owned land) keep a lower share of cereals for self-consumption (Table N1), which is in line with expectations.

However, in Tajikistan, female decision-makers from wealthier households1 are 16% more likely to purchase food on credit and 20% more likely to borrow money from friends than other decision-makers (Table T2). The set of coping strategies adopted by wealthy female decision-makers thus partly differs from that of other decision-makers as a whole, who are more likely to eat cheap food, reduce food quantity and purchase food on credit. This suggests that wealth influences the set of coping strategies available to or/and adopted by women.

Female-headed households

In Bangladesh, female-headed households are found to be more likely to face food shortage (Table B2), which could be explained that, in the context of Bangladesh, these households are poorer [START_REF] Kabeer | Gender, poverty, and inequality: a brief history of feminist contributions in the field of international development[END_REF] and, we suspect, might have more limited social networks, less access to information and might face greater exclusion from the provision of public services. We also found a significant and positive effect of female-headed households on the likelihood to rely on cheap food (Table B3). In Nepal, women from female-headed households reported keeping a larger share of their cereal harvest for self-consumption instead of selling (Table N1), but we did not observe any effect on crop yields and child nutrition (Tables N2 andN3).

In Tajikistan, females who make decisions in households with male migrants2 are 14% less likely to switch to cheap food and 9% less likely to reduce quantity of food consumed (Table T2, which in this case suggests that women use remittances to reduce food insecurity in the household.

Caste and ethnicity

In Nepal, the effect of Dalit caste is not significant on any of our food security indicators, which is at first glance surprising as Dalits are still among the poorest in Nepal (UNDP, 2014). This might be because a high proportion of Dalits is still landless (NSIS, 2012), hence we cannot find any direct linear relationship between caste and agricultural productivity indicators. Janajati households retain a larger share of vegetable for their own consumption (Table N1) and they also achieve higher productivity of rice and wheat, all things being equal.

(Table N2). This is also unexpected, but might due to the high proportion in our sample of Janajatis living in Terai Madesh, a region characterised by higher landholdings and crop productivity than the hill districts surveyed.

Understanding the complexity of empowerment/food security relationships

We now turn to our qualitative data from two communities in Western Nepal to delve into the complexity that characterises the relationships between women's agency and food availability and access. Our findings evidence new variables and processes that were not captured by the quantitative analysis, notably related to empowerment. We first examine agency at the intrahousehold level, in the particular situation of women with migrated husbands. Then, we broaden our analysis to consider how social relationships beyond the household shape access to productive resources and agency.

Intra-household agency

Nepal has seen an increase in long-term male out-migration to India, Malaysia and Gulf countries, which has affected the distribution of gender roles, responsibilities and resources [START_REF] Leder | Reframing women's empowerment in water security programmes in Western Nepal[END_REF][START_REF] Sugden | Agrarian stress and climate change in the Eastern Gangetic Plains: Gendered vulnerability in a stratified social formation[END_REF]. In this context, we found that high levels of women's agency, as assessed with the A-WEAI, do not necessarily translate into a feeling of empowerment ('shashaktikaran' in Nepali) and in increased food security. In contrast, several women with permanently out-migrated husbands, who were rated "empowered" according to their A-WEAI scores, were rated by other women and self-rated themselves as the least empowered and marginalised in their community.

For example, for one of our respondents, Kamala, the A-WEAI indicators indicated that she is empowered in decision-making, based on her position as household head without the presence of in-laws or her husband. However, she stated to feel lonely and worried about her ability to provide quality education and adequate medical care for her son and pay back multiple loans.

As phone calls to her husband abroad are expensive, communication and mental support from him are very limited, and her maternal family lives far away. In fact, in FGDs, women identified kins' mental, financial and labor support as a contributing factor to their feeling of empowerment. Conversely, they perceived support to others as a key achievement of empowered women including the ability to help other women in cultivating crops and vegetables: "They [empowered women] can tell us what to grow and how much to plant".

Another woman, Sunita, resides with her three young children while her husband works in Malaysia. She makes minor household decisions, decides on agricultural production and is an active member of savings groups. However, when asked to describe her life, Sunita described her life full of 'dukkha' ('sadness' in Nepali). Her husband's passport was taken away, making him unsure of how to return home and he has only managed to send her NPR 20,000 (USD 200) in the last three years, a small amount considering he took a loan of NPR 160,000

(USD 1,600) to get to Malaysia. When harvest fails due to drought, she works as daily wage labourer, carrying construction material for 200 NPR (1.7 USD) a day, as a coping strategy to be able to purchase food.

21

These two particular life stories illustrate how increased control over decision-making within the household does not necessarily match with women's own perceptions of their empowerment. We encountered many women who did not feel empowered by taking decisions while their husband is away. Rather they felt powerless in the face of challenges related to exploitative credit system, social norms, masculine bureaucracies, or double standards to access public services. Yet they did not necessarily see empowerment as challenging the oppressive structures and relationships that shape their lives, but rather prioritized household food security and family harmony.

Looking beyond the household: caste and class

In Nepal, Dalits usually reside at the fringe or outside the main settlement, with limited access to land, social networks and information. They lack access to water resources due to religious norms and structural constraints [START_REF] Nightingale | Bounding difference: Intersectionality and the material production of gender, caste, class and environment in Nepal[END_REF]. In mixed caste communities, existing inequalities in water access have often been reproduced through external water and food security project interventions as local power relationships largely shape their implementation [START_REF] Clement | Social and environmental justice in foreign aid: A case study of irrigation interventions in western Nepal. New Angle[END_REF][START_REF] Leder | Reframing women's empowerment in water security programmes in Western Nepal[END_REF].

In one of the researched communities in Nepal, the project staff invited all women and men from the communities to participate in meetings to decide on the location of taps before a multiple-use water system (MUS) was built. However, the Dalits, who represent 15% of the population, perceive that the distribution has not been fair as only one of the 22 water taps was installed in their settlement. One contributing factor was the limited ability of Dalit women to influence decisions due to the dominance of higher caste men during the meetings.

In addition, their landlessness or almost landlessness was stated as an important hindering factor to receive a tap, as the BRACED project targeted households who could use the water to grow vegetables in their home garden. Dalits were not only excluded but also negatively affected by the project intervention. While higher caste households benefited from greater access to water taps, women of these households would less frequently go to the old communal water taps and natural water sources. Because Dalit women have to rely on other women to fill their vessel, as touching water is culturally not allowed for them, they now have to wait longer times to get water.

The way caste, class and inter-household relations intersect to shape food security became very apparent in the case of one landless Dalit research participant, Maya. Maya lives with her two daughters, and her out-migrated husband in Malaysia has neither sent remittances nor news. Maya is the one who makes decisions at home, however, as an agricultural wage laborer, she is dependent on landowners for her household food security, and in particular on an elderly high caste Chhetri "mother", who took her under her care and allows her to stay next to her house in exchange of free agricultural and domestic labor. Thanks to her close relation to this Chhettri woman, she developed both as an outspoken leader among the Dalits, but also as a critically scrutinized woman in the village. Her privileged geographical location also makes her less prone to food shortages than other Dalits, who live closer to the mountain stream and are more exposed to monsoonal floods and landslides. . Her multiple gendered and caste subjectivities demonstrates how leadership is complicated and shifting over social spaces: as a Dalit, she belongs to the most marginalized group within the community, considered impure in the Hindu caste system. Nevertheless, she is much more privileged than other Dalits due to her social relation to a Chhetri and a privileged geographical location as she is less prone to food shortages than other Dalits, who live closer to the mountain stream and are more exposed to monsoonal floods and landslides.

Discussion and conclusion

Reflecting on our findings in light of our framework constituted by resources, agency, achievements and critical consciousness, a few interesting lessons for food security debates and programmes emerge.

First, when examining the linkages between women's agency and food security achievements with a quantitative analysis, we evidenced that different indicators of agency and even different types of decisions within one indicator of agency are associated with different components of food security. These results are in line with earlier studies (e.g. Malapit et al., 2015a;Malapit and Quisumbing, 2015) but our cross-country analysis further highlights the diversity of patterns and the diversity of roles that socio-economic structures play in shaping these patterns across countries.

This points to the challenges to select the right indicators and to conduct cross-country comparative analyses with similar sets of indicators. Our quantitative analysis shows interesting patterns between women's empowerment and food security but their diversity across countries and across indicators of empowerment and food security raises more questions than provides answers. Whereas the quantitative findings point to some of the intracommunity and intra-household factors that influence the pathways linking women's empowerment and food security, the qualitative analysis from Nepal allows digging into some of this complexity and evidences how some of these factors, such as caste, class and migration status, among others, intersect to produce different empowerment and food security trajectories. This leads us to question the relevance of implementing a one-size-fits-all intervention for empowering rural women farmers or increasing household food securityeven within one community. We rather defend the importance of adopting a contextualised and intersectional approach in food security programmes that addresses the structural barriers that keep the marginalised, excluded and powerless food insecure. This means disaggregating the category of 'women' for project design, monitoring and evaluation, and moving beyond single distinct categories (e.g. separately considering gender, class, ethnicity), by intersecting categories (e.g. landless Dalit woman, Chhetri woman with migrated husband in small landholding household etc). Beyond caste, ethnicity and class, age and position in the household also matter in feelings of empowerment -this was only slightly touched upon in this paper, but better developed elsewhere, drawing on data from the same sites (Anonymous, forthcoming).

Such an intersectional approach then would allow a better understanding of food insecurity as a process: namely, how one's ability to exercise agency to become food secure is embedded in institutions (including social norms) and political-economic structures. In our findings for Bangladesh, increased women's agency reduces the likelihood of their household to face food shortages but female-headed households remain more vulnerable to food shortage even after controlling for women's agency. Similarly, our interviews in Nepal show that the entrenched social barriers for Dalit women to access land and water resources affect their ability to benefit from water and food security projects. Global food security discourses therefore need to bring the role of institutions and political-economic structures to the fore: how they shape the diverse women's and men's differentiated capabilities to benefit from food security programmes, engage in markets, influence food production and distribution systems and food policies. Increased individual agency in agricultural production does not necessarily allow marginalised women overcoming the structural barriers that prevent them achieving what they value, including a decent and non-exploitative way to be food secure. Furthermore, in Nepal, social relationships play a central role in perceptions of empowerment through emotional, mental and labor support and the sharing of knowledge and skills across gender, class and ethnicity differences -in this perspective, empowerment largely goes beyond increasing the agency of isolated individuals.

Lastly, our qualitative findings underline the importance of jointly examining one's increased agency with the local meanings and values associated to this agency. Increased agency feels like empowerment only when it helps achieving what one values. This has major implications for food security programmes in the context of migration: as women with migrated husbands might be considered more empowered on the basis of decision-making indicators, programmes might shift investments to different targets. Yet in Nepal, these women do not necessarily perceive their increased agency as a form of empowerment. Most of the women we met rather find it stressful, particularly when they lack the mental and emotional support from their relatives to exercise this agency. In addition, our findings point to the role of critical consciousness in the empowerment process: entering male spaces might not be perceived as empowering if the boundaries and norms of these spaces seem 'natural' and remain unquestioned. Food security programmes also have a role to play here -in engaging both marginalised men and women in critical discussions on unequal food production and distribution systems. All regressions are conducted by authors. The marginal effects (dy/dx) are reported, along with the standard errors in parentheses.

Funding sources

The standard errors are clustered at the VDC level. ***, ** and * depict significance at 99%, 95% and 90% respectively.

  ǂ Tajikistan is divided into four regions, and the capital city of Dushanbe. The regions are Sughd, Districts of Republican Subordination, Khatlon, and Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous. Each region is divided into districts, and each district into jamoats, which are the lowest administrative units. * Binary variables ** The household wealth index was built using a principal component analysis with indicators of asset ownership, type of house and electricity access.

  inequalities within the household are culturally desired and not questioned. In contrast, several other daughter-in-laws mentioned they advise their in-laws, while at the same time being critically conscious of the necessity to respect their elders. This intermediate form of awareness and agency may open up spaces to bring about social change.

Table 1 .

 1 Background and characteristics of the quantitative data collection and analysis

	159
		Bangladesh	Nepal	Tajikistan
	Name of	Aquatic Agricultural System	Building Resilience and	"Impact of Water Users
	project	CGIAR Research programme	Adaptation to Climate	Associations on Water and
		"Community water	Extremes and Disasters	Land Productivity, Equity
		management from a micro level	(BRACED) -Anukulan	and Food Security in
		perspective"		Tajikistan"
	Type of	Project baseline household	Project baseline household	Project household survey
	survey	survey	survey
	Districts/	Khulna Hub (Polder 3, 30, 29,	Bardiya, Dadeldhura, Doti,	Khatlon Region ǂ (116
	Region	43/2f). The Unions included	Kailali, Kanchanpur and	jamoats selected), Sughd
		were Noapara, Tarali,	Surkhet	Region (21 jamoats
		Gangarampur, Batiaghata,		selected) and districts of
		Sarappur, Sahas.		Republic Subordination
				Region (27 jamoats
				selected)
	Survey date	August 2015	January 2016	March 2016
	Sample size	672 households	600 households	1920 households
	Sex of the	Household head. Majority of
	respondent	the respondent (86.8%) were
		male.

Table 2 .

 2 Socio-economic characteristics of surveyed households

	Population characteristics	Bangladesh	Nepal	Tajikistan
	Average household size	5.2	5.7	4.8
	Proportion of female-headed households (%)	13	35	14
	Average age of household head	46	42	53
	Religion, caste and ethnicity (% distribution)
	Dalit and marginalised groups		16.6	-
	Janajati		40.9
	Hindu	61.5	-	-
	Muslim	37.9	-	-
	Vegetable cultivation
	Proportion of households cultivating vegetable	55		75
			-
	on homestead land (%)
	Agricultural land holding
	Households owning agricultural land (%)	100	97	99
	Average size of agricultural land (ha)	0.51	0.37	12.65
	Percentage of holdings operating less than 0.5 ha	64.7	74.0	0.0

Table B1 .

 B1 This work received financial support from the CGIAR Research Programmes on Aquatic Agricultural Systems and on Water, Land and Ecosystems, from the BRACED programme supported by UKAID from the Department for International Development (grant KPMG APPENDIX. Women's decision and the share of produce retained for feeding the household in Bangladesh

			OLS regressions
		Aman rice Vegetables Aquaculture
	Female decides how to use agricultural produce	-1.506	6.111**	5.338
		(3.693)	(3.104)	(3.383)
	Wealth index	0.964	0.137	-0.631
		(0.878)	(0.720)	(0.792)
	Area of land owned, in hectare	0.418	-7.804***	1.296
		(2.154)	(1.881)	(2.140)
	Hindu	2.373	7.713***	2.090
		(3.380)	(2.729)	(2.986)
	Female headed household	-1.363	10.26**	2.609
		(4.582)	(4.230)	(4.313)
	Age of the head of the household	0.370***	0.102	0.0353
		(0.123)	(0.0946)	(0.105)
	N	345	525	422
	R-squared	0.039	0.076	0.011
	Source: Data collected by authors.
	All regressions are conducted by authors. The coefficients are reported, along with the standard errors in
	parentheses.
	The standard errors are clustered at the village level. ***, ** and * depict significance at 99%, 95% and 90%
	respectively.

Table N1 .

 N1 Women's empowerment and the share of produce retained for feeding the household in Nepal -OLS

	regressions
		Cereals	Vegetables
	Input in productive decisions	-2.342	-2.005
		(2.337)	(2.138)
	Control over the income	-3.368	-3.995**
		(2.143)	(1.977)
	Ownership of assets	0.421	1.077
		(5.549)	(5.390)
	Access to and decisions about credit	3.446*	3.186*
		(1.806)	(1.654)
	Group membership	-1.278	0.588
		(1.727)	(1.607)
	Workload	-0.986	-0.880
		(1.971)	(1.848)
	Age head of the household	0.0970	-0.0144
		(0.0736)	(0.0680)
	Female headed household	4.487**	0.0581
		(1.917)	(1.776)
	Dalit household	4.725	4.992*
		(3.045)	(2.640)
	Janajati household	-1.145	5.648***
		(1.892)	(1.747)
	Number of household members	0.160	0.00782
		(0.410)	(0.390)
	Area of land owned, in hectare	-17.60***	-2.550
		(3.125)	(2.945)
	Income from remittances	-2.534	-3.612**
		(1.876)	(1.716)
	N	361	402
	R-squared	0.139	0.0883
	Source: BRACED Anukulan Baseline survey.
	All regressions are conducted by authors. The coefficients are reported, along with the standard errors in
	parentheses.
	The standard errors are clustered at the village development committee (VDC) level. ***, ** and * depict
	significance at 99%, 95% and 90% respectively.

Table T1 .

 T1 Women's decisions and the share of produce retained for household consumption in Tajikistan -OLS regression † these variables are dummies for source of domestic water: public tap or piped water in the house, with drawing water from canals as the default. All regressions are conducted by authors. The coefficients are reported, along with the standard errors in parentheses. The standard errors are clustered at the village level. ***, ** and * depict significance at 99%, 95% and 90% respectively.

		Maize	Capsicum	Cucumber	Eggplant	Tomato	Onion	Potato
	Female decides share of harvest retained for hh-consumption	-0.06 (0.02)*	0.02 (0.02)	0.02 (0.01)	0.001	-0.01 (0.01)	0.01 (0.01)	0.01 (0.01)
	Household with at least one male migrant	-0.01 (0.01)	0.01 (0.01)	0.03 (0.01)*** 0.01 (0.01)	0.01 (0.01)	0.01 (0.007)*	0.01 (0.005)**
	Household earns income from wages	0.02 (0.02)	0.01 (0.01)	0.02 (0.01)	0.01 (0.01)	0.02 (0.01)**	0.03 (0.02)**	0.01 (0.01)
	Family size	-0.01 (0.01)	-0.000 (0.01) -0.01 (0.01)	-0.001 (0.005)	-0.01 (0.004)	-0.002 (0.01)	-0.002 (0.005)
	Number of female members	0.03 (0.02)	-0.02 (0.01)	0.01 (0.01)	0.01 (0.01)	0.01 (0.01)**	0.003 (0.01)	0.01 (0.01)
	Age of the head of the household	0.001 (0.001)	0.001 (0.001) -0.001 (0.001) -0.002 (0.0003)	-0.0002 (0.0003) 0.0001 (0.0005) 0.000 (0.000)
	Household fetches drinking water from a public tap †	0.05 (0.02)**	0.03 (0.02)* -0.01 (0.02)	-0.001 (0.01)	0.02 (0.02)	0.004 (0.02)	0.03 (0.02)*
	Presence of piped water in the house †	0.05 (0.02)***	0.04 (0.02)** -0.01 (0.02)	-0.03 (0.02)	-0.002 (0.01)	0.02 (0.02)	-0.02 (0.02)
	Gas or electric stove used for cooking	0.03 (0.02)	-0.01 (0.01)	-0.01 (0.02)	-0.01 (0.01)	-0.001 (0.01)	0.02 (0.02)	0.01 (0.01)
	Dwelling has wood flooring	-0.003 (0.02)	-0.002 (0.02) 0.01 (0001)	0.01 (0.01)	0.003 (0.01)	0.02 (0.02)	0.01 (0.01)
	Highest education attainment at least high school	0.02 (0.02)	0.001 (0.02) 00001 (0.02)	0.002 (0.01)	-0.02 (0.01)*	-0.01 (0.02)	0.001 (0.01)
	At least one household member has vocational training	-0.01 (0.02)	0.003 (0.02) 0.02 (0.02)	0.003 (0.01)	-0.01 (0.01)	-0.001 (0.02)	0.01 (0.01)
	Female decides* piped water in house	-0.02 (0.05)	-0.02 (0.03)	-0.07 (0.04)*	-0.02 (0.04)	-0.03 (0.03)	0.004 (0.04)	-0.03 (0.04)
	Female decides * household has male migrants	0.01 (0.04)	0.01 (0.02)	-0.02 (0.02)	0.01 (0.02)	-0.001 (0.01)	-0.05 (0.03)**	-0.03 (0.02)
	N	523	863	784	651	1418	619	1213
	Prob> F	0.19	0.64	0.1318	0.8917	1915	0.2272	0.1095
	R-squared	0.04	0.02	0.03	0.01	0.01	0.02	0.120
	Source: Data collected by authors.

Table B2 .

 B2 Women's decision and food shortage in Bangladesh

			Tobit regressions		Logit regressions
		Number of months with	Number of months	At least one month of
		food shortage	with acute food	food shortage
				shortage
	Female decides how to use
	agricultural produce	-0.726*		-2.461		-0.0405
		(0.431)		(1.855)		(0.0539)
	Female decides how to use income
	from crop sales		-1.404***		-5.375**		-0.176***
			(0.417)		(2.308)		(0.0482)
	Wealth index	-0.408*** -0.419***	-0.457	-0.304	-0.0644*** -0.0641***
		(0.100)	(0.0998)	(0.382)	(0.371)	(0.0130)	(0.0128)
	Area of land owned, in hectare	-1.804*** -1.482***	-0.757	-0.686	-0.214***	-0.175***
		(0.324)	(0.298)	(0.946)	(0.913)	(0.0460)	(0.0416)
	Hindu	-0.435	-0.450	2.719*	2.344*	-0.0572	-0.0553
		(0.380)	(0.378)	(1.438)	(1.392)	(0.0479)	(0.0473)
	Female headed household	1.665***	1.675***	-2.242	-1.188	0.178***	0.176***
		(0.540)	(0.546)	(2.246)	(2.063)	(0.0664)	(0.0664)
	Age of the head of the household	-0.00441	-0.00318	-0.0346	-0.0291	-0.000305	-0.000186
		(0.0135)	(0.0132)	(0.0519) (0.0499)	(0.00173)	(0.00170)
	N	583	593	583	593	583	593
	Pseudo R-squared	0.0398	0.0392	0.0249	0.0351	0.1063	0,1082
	Source: Data collected by authors.
	All regressions are conducted by authors. The coefficients are reported for tobit regression and marginal effects
	(dy/dx) are reported for logit regressions, along with the standard errors in parentheses.
	The standard errors are clustered at the village level. ***, ** and * depict significance at 99%, 95% and 90%
	respectively.

Table N2 .

 N2 Women's empowerment and the yields of cereals in Nepal -OLS regression

		Rice	Wheat
		productivity	productivity
	Input in productive decisions	161.3	-186.0
		(177.0)	(144.4)
	Control over the income	-160.8	284.9**
		(150.6)	(127.8)
	Ownership of assets	669.6*	112.6
		(378.3)	(348.8)
	Access to and decisions about credit	101.4	-481.0***
		(133.9)	(108.2)
	Group membership	61.99	-1.803
		(121.4)	(97.86)
	Workload	133.2	146.5
		(142.3)	(118.8)
	Age head of the household	-2.230	-8.494**
		(5.163)	(4.172)
	Female headed household	-2.956	-158.8
		(136.5)	(111.0)
	Dalit household	-195.8	-155.5
		(180.6)	(150.9)
	Janajati household	307.0**	351.4***
		(135.0)	(111.3)
	Number of household members	33.44	20.78
		(30.05)	(24.76)
	Area of land owned, in hectare	-145.8	-31.90
		(225.9)	(176.6)
	Income from remittances	177.4	295.9***
		(128.9)	(106.8)
	N	422	397
	R-squared	0.049	0.121
	Source: BRACED Anukulan baseline survey.
	All regressions are conducted by authors. The coefficients are reported, along with the standard errors in
	parentheses.
	The standard errors are clustered at the VDC level. ***, ** and * depict significance at 99%, 95% and 90%
	respectively.

Table T2 .

 T2 Women's decisions and the adoption of a coping strategy in Tajikistan -logit regression

		Eat cheap food	Reduce quantity in each meal	Spend day without eating	Borrow money from friends	Purchase food on credit	Eat stored seeds	Sell items for money
	Female decides share of harvest retained for hh consumption	0.158***	0.123***	0.0401	-0.00869	0.0830**	0.0367	-0.0158
		-0.0367	-0.0368	-0.0244	-0.0344	-0.0361	-0.0363	-0.0358
	Household with at least one male migrant	0.0219	0.0159	-0.0259	-0.0209	0.0035	-0.037	-0.0425*
		-0.0228	-0.0234	-0.0184	-0.0223	-0.0226	-0.0231	-0.0228
	Household earns income from wages	-0.00204	-0.0643**	-0.0163	-0.0284	0.0172	-0.0256	0.0134
		-0.0282	-0.0285	-0.02	-0.0266	-0.0277	-0.0281	-0.0278
	Family size	-0,00488	-0,00267	-0,00593	-0,0168	0,00658	0.0265**	0.0417***
		-0,0131	-0,0134	-0,00963	-0,0126	-0,013	-0,0131	-0,0129
	Number of female members	-0,00167	-0,00641	0,00102	0,03	0,0232	-0.0415*	-0,0333
		-0,023	-0,0235	-0,0168	-0,022	-0,023	-0,0231	-0,0227
	Age of the head of the household	0,00109	0,00128	0,00053	-0,000842	0,000407	0.00202*	0,000103
		-0,00106	-0,00108	-0,000747	-0,00101	-0,00104	-0,00106	-0,00105
	Household fetches drinking water from a public tap †	-0.0733**	-0.0961***	-0,0267	-0,0386	0.0624*	-0.0789**	-0,00422
		-0,0358	-0,0353	-0,024	-0,0327	-0,0343	-0,0347	-0,035
	Presence of piped water in the house †	-0.284***	-0.342***	-0.0885**	-0.214***	-0.170***	-0.196***	-0.150***
		-0,0636	-0,0564	-0,0403	-0,0506	-0,0659	-0,0583	-0,0575
	Gas or electric stove used for cooking	-0.0981***	-0.0804***	-0.0392**	-0.0558**	-0.0142	-0.0840***	-0.105***
		-0.0278	-0.0283	-0.0198	-0.0263	-0.0276	-0.0276	-0.0271
	Dwelling has wood flooring	-0.0449	-0.039	-0.0570***	-0.0349	-0.114***	0.0205	-0.0226
		-0.0285	-0.0289	-0.0196	-0.0268	-0.0279	-0.0284	-0.028
	Highest education attainment at least high school	-0.159***	-0.0877**	-0.0718***	-0.0257	-0.0308	-0.00898	-0.0102
		-0.0384	-0.0386	-0.0232	-0.0361	-0.0378	-0.0381	-0.0377
	At least one household member has vocational training	-0.0135	-0.0133	-0.033	0.0106	0.0166	-0.0337	-0.000927
		-0.0339	-0.0344	-0.0223	-0.0322	-0.0333	-0.0335	-0.0333
	Female decides* piped water in house	0.123	0.139	0.0625	0.196*	0.159**	0.0594	-0.023
		-0.0753	-0.0904	-0.0994	-0.105	-0.0682	-0.0915	-0.0914
	Female decides * household has male migrants	-0.140***	-0.0911*	-0.0249	0.0343	-0.0247	0.00276	0.00338

Table B3 .

 B3 Women's decision and coping strategies in BangladeshAll regressions are conducted by authors. The marginal effects (dy/dx) are reported, along with the standard errors in parentheses.The standard errors are clustered at the village level. ***, ** and * depict significance at 99%, 95% and 90% respectively.

							Logit regressions
		Eat cheap food	Reduce food quantity	Spend day without	Borrow food	Purchase food on credit Eat stored
						eating					seeds
	Female decides how to use
	agricultural produce	-0.0831*		-0.0589		0.0124		0.0215		-0.0366		-0.0237**
		(0.0481)		(0.0399)		(0.0247)		(0.0447)		(0.0439)		(0.0112)
	Female decides how to use income
	from crop sales		-0.192***		-0.108***		0.0164		-0.0600		-0.100**
			(0.0428)		(0.0373)		(0.0229)		(0.0387)		(0.0396)
	Wealth index	-0.0432*** -0.0432*** -0.0521*** -0.0568*** -0.00907*	-0.00850	-0.0367*** -0.0406*** -0.0372*** -0.0416***	-0.00346
		(0.0119)	(0.0119)	(0.0103)	(0.0104)	(0.00526)	(0.00521)	(0.0102)	(0.0101)	(0.0107)	(0.0107)	(0.00328)
	Area of land owned, in hectare	-0.170***	-0.135***	-0.101***	-0.0808**	0.00202	0.000274	-0.0835**	-0.0501	-0.142*** -0.0961***	-0.0217
		(0.0436)	(0.0395)	(0.0381)	(0.0351)	(0.0151)	(0.0149)	(0.0365)	(0.0314)	(0.0410)	(0.0363)	(0.0141)
	Hindu	-0.0616	-0.0659	0.0175	-0.00473	0.0134	0.0123	-0.110***	-0.104***	-0.0203	-0.0296	0.0331**
		(0.0443)	(0.0442)	(0.0386)	(0.0387)	(0.0209)	(0.0205)	(0.0370)	(0.0366)	(0.0401)	(0.0396)	(0.0159)
	Female headed household	0.132*	0.126*	0.0399	0.0795	-0.0207	-0.0157	0.0827	0.0761	0.0471	0.0350	-0.00939
		(0.0688)	(0.0696)	(0.0595)	(0.0644)	(0.0241)	(0.0253)	(0.0641)	(0.0650)	(0.0626)	(0.0631)	(0.0133)
	Age of the head of the household	-0.000624	-0.000369	-0.000387	-9.71e-05	-0.000815	-0.000779	-0.000862	-0.000520	0.000322	0.000194	-0.000394
		(0.00161)	(0.00159)	(0.00136)	(0.00136)	(0.000732) (0.000714)	(0.00138)	(0.00134)	(0.00144)	(0.00141)	(0.000452)
	N	583	593	583	593	583	593	583	593	583	593	583
	Pseudo R-squared	0.071	0.0802	0.0757	0.084	0.0194	0.0179	0.0587	0.0567	0.0569	0.0586	0.0755
	Source: Data collected by authors.
								40

Table N3 .

 N3 Women's empowerment and the likelihood of malnutrition for under 2 children -logit regression

		Stunting	Wasting	Underweight
	Input in productive decisions	-0.0338	-0.0122	-0.0264
		(0.0848)	(0.0591)	(0.0715)
	Control over the income	0.0845	-0.0485	0.0323
		(0.0791)	(0.0615)	(0.0605)
	Ownership of assets	0.0689		-0.102
		(0.300)		(0.281)
	Access to and decisions about credit	-0.135**	-0.0406	-0.121**
		(0.0678)	(0.0464)	(0.0527)
	Group membership	0.0520	-0.0185	-0.0531
		(0.0644)	(0.0447)	(0.0525)
	Workload	0.0376	0.0283	-0.0500
		(0.0788)	(0.0515)	(0.0676)
	Age head of the household	0.00110	-0.00482**	-0.00293
		(0.00277)	(0.00196)	(0.00221)
	Female headed household	-0.0389	-0.0409	-0.0168
		(0.0744)	(0.0495)	(0.0590)
	Dalit household	-0.186**	-0.0655	-0.0678
		(0.0822)	(0.0499)	(0.0612)
	Janajati household	-0.0986	-0.0493	-0.0888
		(0.0726)	(0.0478)	(0.0568)
	Number of household members	0.00930	0.0211**	0.0154
		(0.0162)	(0.0107)	(0.0128)
	Area of land owned, in hectare	-0.0691	-0.0335	0.000633
		(0.114)	(0.0786)	(0.0858)
	Income from remittances	-0.0509	-0.119***	-0.0270
		(0.0678)	(0.0422)	(0.0530)
	N	265	264	267
	Pseudo R-squared	0.0387	0.0687	0.0441
	Source: BRACED Anukulan baseline survey.

The product of a dummy variable that takes a value of 1 when the sex of the decision maker is female and a dummy variable that denotes that presence/absence of piped water in the household

Product of a dummy variable that takes a value of 1 when the sex of the decision maker is female and a dummy variable that denotes the presence/absence of male migrants in the household