Women control over income, agricultural commercialization and dietary diversity: Analysis of rural households in Zambia

Women empowerment and its positive eect on household welfare is well acknowledged in literature. How- ever, empirical evidence on the eect of women empowerment in agriculture on household food security and how this pathway is in uenced by household agricultural commercialization remains scarce. This article attempts to close this gap by examining the impact of women control over agricultural income on household dietary diversity taking into account the household level of agriculture commercialization in rural Zambia. Applying ordered probit regression model, results show that women control over agricultural income has positive and signicant impact on household dietary diversity for households that consume relatively more diversied diets compared to those that consume less. However, agricultural commercialization tends to sub- vert women control over income resulting in positive but less signicant impact on household dietary diversity.