Enhancing Women's Autonomy and Food Security through Micro-Enterprises: A Case Study of WFP's Aggregation Centers in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh

Abstract (English)

In Bangladesh, the gendered division of labor significantly limits women’s access to climate adaptation opportunities. Traditional norms confine women to unpaid domestic tasks, such as childcare, cooking, collecting water, etc., whereas men primarily engage in income-generating activities outside the home. This paper will explore how enabling women to engage in micro-enterprises or small businesses near their homes, such as vegetable gardening, dairy farming, or poultry rearing, could shift these activities from unpaid care work to business ventures. Such a shift can enhance women’s economic autonomy, reduce time spent on unpaid care work, and improve food security in the face of climate change.
A notable example of this transition is the World Food Programme (WFP)’s aggregation centers model in Cox’s Bazar. These centers aggregate produce from small-scale women farmers and connect them to broader markets, providing opportunities for women to increase their income and control over economic resources. This paper will investigate how such initiatives can address key challenges in gendered labor dynamics, particularly the unequal access to resources like training, finance, and technology, which are critical for climate resilience. Additionally, this paper will explore how participation in these micro-enterprises impacts women’s autonomy index by providing economic independence, reducing the time spent on unpaid care and domestic work, and enhancing food security in the region.
This research will use a bottom-up, participatory research approach to assess the impacts of women's participation in micro-enterprises, with a focus on resilience and food security in climate-vulnerable areas like Cox’s Bazar. The study will also enhance causal inferences by incorporating a comparative analysis with a control group of non-participants. The research will integrate gender-sensitive lenses and climate adaptation frameworks to explore how localized economic models can address systemic inequalities and improve women's autonomy and adaptive capacity in climate-vulnerable contexts.