Introduction

Bangladesh is a small territory of 147,570 sq. km. situated on a fertile alluvial plain. India borders the country to the northeast, west and north; Myanmar is to the southeast; and the Bay of Bengal to the south. Bangladesh has 160 million inhabitants and the population density is 1,198 per sq. km. The annual growth rate of the population is 1.6% (BER, 2015). According to BBS estimation, about 30% of the population is considered as youth (defined as aged between 14 to 24 years; BBS, 2016).

The country has been following a mixed economy that operates on free market principles. The economy has been growing steadily. The real GDP grew by 6.55% in FY 2014-2015 compared to only 5.8% growth in the preceding decade FY 2010-2011 (BER, 2016).

The economy of Bangladesh has reached a sustained growth trajectory with strong macroeconomic fundamentals. The GDP growth over the last ten years consistently remained above 6%. The estimated growth in agricultural output was 2.60%, whereas industry output growth was 10.10 % and service sector growth was 5.80% in FY 2015-2016, compared to 4.7%, 6.0%, and 6.4% growth in these sectors, respectively, in FY 2010-2011. Thus, agricultural output growth is now lagging behind that of other sectors. Despite the losses caused by two consecutive floods and the cyclone ‘Sidr’ in 2007 and economic challenges at the global level, the economy of Bangladesh has been showing remarkable resilience. The satisfactory growth of import-export trade, increasing trends in the flow of remittances, and the favourable balance of the current account kept the economy stable. However, some adverse impacts noted in certain areas include the declining trend of remittance inflows (declined by 2.39% compared to FY 2014-15), declining export earnings (particularly exports of the garment products to the western world), and inflationary pressure in recent times (BER, 2016).

This macroeconomic achievement comes with improvements in socio-economic indicators that measure poverty rates, life expectancy, gender equity, nutritional status, etc. The Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) 2010 data revealed that the incidence of poverty has declined by 1.74 percentage points from 2000 to 2010. Life expectancy for men rose from 64.4 to 67.9 years and for women it rose from 65.8 to 70.3 years from 2005-2010.

Noticeably, poverty as measured by reduced head count ratio has consistently declined. In 2015, the estimated poverty rate (upper poverty) was 24.8% (BER, 2016). However, the lack of sexdisaggregated data makes it difficult to measure the reduction of women’s poverty (SFYP, 2015). According to Social Progress Imperatives, the Social Progress Index 2014 for Bangladesh was 52.04. This is a better rate than the averages for the nearby countries of Nepal, India, and Pakistan. According to the Global Gender Gap Index, Bangladesh ranked 68 out of 142 countriesin terms of the magnitude of the gap with a score of 0.6978 in 2014 (Begum, 2014).

In spite of the improvements in gender equity, women in Bangladesh are more vulnerable than men with respect to unemployment and poverty. Employment for rural women is more likely to be within the agricultural and home-based manufacturing sectors. This has been linked to the cultural and religious practice of ‘purdah’9 (Sultana, et al., 2009). Although the poverty situation of Bangladesh improved over the past several years, significant achievements have not appeared in the nutrition sector. The rate of underweight children was ca. 36% in 2011, 30% of those were born to mothers who had secondary education and were malnourished. In 2011, 30% of children under five ware severely malnourished and 51% of children aged 6-59 months were anaemic. It is widely expected that judicious interventions in the agricultural sector could help improve women’s standing/empowerment, and contribute to better nutritional outcomes/status of both children and women.

Literatures emphasize on the gender dynamics in designing, implementing and evaluating agricultural development projects (Johnson et al. 2015; Quisumbing et al. 2015). There is more evidence supporting such arguments. For example, in Bangladesh, agricultural interventions disseminated through women’s groups brought better results in improving women’s and children’s nutrition than those targeted to households or male member (Quisumbing et al. 2011). It is evident that increases in women's empowerment are positively associated with calorie availability and dietary diversity at household level (Sraboni et al. 2014). The Social Development Foundation (SDF) implemented the Social Investment Programme Project (SIPP) from 2003 to 2011 to promote community development through strengthening rural institutions by focusing on the marginalized portion of the society. The project targeted ultra-poor and poor households and facilitated women’s empowerment through engaging women in decision making positions in all village institutions set by the project.