Poster Paper:
Do Cultural Practices Affect Women’s Bodyweight? Evidence from India Using Longitudinal Data
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
In recent times, substantial rise in overweight and obesity among urban women has been documented in India, along with preexisting high rates of malnutrition in children under the age of five. This is a major concern since women’s body weight impacts not only their own health but also affects the future health of their children. Cultural practices within the household are likely to affect their weight since Indian women almost always live with families. Due to historical influences and societal structures, household practices in India tend be different for men and women. Women often do not have equal status within the household and hence lack autonomy. In other words, household practices are ‘gendered’. Researchers have evaluated the impact of such gendered household practices on Indian women’s health and behavior outcomes such as prevalence of hypertension, fertility rate and use of antenatal care. However, no study has yet evaluated the causal effect of gendered household practices on women’s body weight outcomes. The main issue was the lack of longitudinal data with simultaneous information on gendered household practices and women’s bodyweight.
Objective: I explored whether weight outcomes among reproductive age women in India are affected by sociocultural household factors and whether these effects are moderated by urban residence. It can be argued that the gendered household practices may affect urban and rural women differently. Structural differences in the urban and rural India such as availability of wage work for women, greater access to food and smaller family sizes in cities may modify the effect of gendered household practices.
Data and methods: I used a unique panel data from two rounds of the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), which contained information about both: the practice of gendered cultural household practices and body weight of reproductive age women (between the ages 15 to 49 years) measured by IHDS surveyors. Women living in rural and urban areas of India who were interviewed during both rounds of the IHDS surveys were part of the sample (N=20,051). I employed household fixed-effects models to investigate whether the change in the body weight outcomes (measured in BMI) and in the likelihood of being overweight or obese (using BMI cutoffs for obesity which were specific to Asian populations) among women was associated with various gendered cultural household practices.
Results: Preliminary analysis suggests that among rural women, gendered practices were significantly associated with higher bodyweight. However, among urban women, gendered household practices were not significantly associated with body weight outcomes or with overweight and obesity.
Conclusions: Gendered cultural household practices in India affect bodyweight outcomes among rural women. Since most of the population still lives in rural areas, Indian policymakers should pay attention to these issues in order to improve women’s health.
