Enabling women's nutrition knowledge through empowerment: the role of ICTs

Abstract

The study aims to identify the extent of rural farm women's use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and explore the relationship between ICT use, empowerment, and nutrition knowledge. A total of 184 women were interviewed out of 3005 farm families from three unions of Kalapara upazila under Patuakhali district of Bangladesh using a structured interview schedule. Data were analyzed using Partial Least Squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). This study discovered that the increase in respondents' ICT skills and level of ICT use is positively related to respondents' empowerment. Such empowerment is associated with an increase in their nutrition knowledge as well. This study guides how to promote more ICT-based solutions for rural households.

Keywords:

• Information and communication technology (ICT)
• empowerment
• women
• nutrition
• SEM
• Bangladesh

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Prof Mark Bell and Edye Kuyper from University of California, Davis (UC Davis) for their suggestions and valuable feedback during the project operation and finalizing the manuscript. The author is also greatly acknowledged the support from Andrea Bohn, Associate Director, INGENAES and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Disclosure statement

An earlier version of the paper was presented in a regional conference. The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 1 USD = 82 BDT.

2 A questionnaire is attached in the Appendix.

3 Respondents’ categories were determined by using the approach described in section ICT use by women farmers.

4 Indicate primary occupation only, however, we recorded both primary and secondary occupation of the respondents.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the UC DAVIS-INGENAES Program under Grant (PO:UCD190465).

Notes on contributors

Md. Mahbubul Alam

Md. Mahbubul Alam is a Professor in the Department of Agricultural Extension & Information System at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He obtained his PhD in Information Systems from the College of Business, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong in June, 2014. He received his MS in Agricultural Extension in 2006 and BSc (Hons) in Agriculture in 2002 from Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. In his early career, he studied technology adoption in agriculture, and communication media use by knowledge workers in the field of agriculture in rural Bangladesh. Before starting his PhD in 2011, he served as a Full-time Faculty of Agricultural Extension and Information System at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka, Bangladesh for more than 4 years. He has published regularly in national and international journals, and attended many international conferences. He is currently studying users' post-adoption decision process in the social networking context. His research interests include but are not limited to IT adoption & continuation, social media, human behavior & IS and ICTs for development (ICT4D).