Frequency and Psychosocial Determinants of Gender Discrimination Regarding Food Distribution among Families

Abstract

Due to male dominance in society as well as in households, the rights of females are ignored. Hence, thereexists gender discrimination while giving food to family members which in turn results in poor healthstatus for females. Therefore, it is important to explore the causes of this unequal distribution of foodamong family members Objective: To determine psychosocial factors causing gender discriminationregarding food distribution among families Methods: Data collected from fifty females aged 15-80 years,selected from the urban community using non-probability consecutive sampling, were used for analysis.Females with malnutrition, psychological disorders, with laparotomy and major surgery were excluded.Gender discrimination was assessed as males or male children were preferred for better and more fooditems like fresh food, meat, fruits, milk, dairy products and multivariate logistic regression analysis wasdone to see the impact selected factors on gender discrimination Results: The large family size (> 6members) showed significantly higher odds of discrimination (OR=3.89; 95% CI= 1.03-15.26) than smallerfamilies. The odds of food discrimination were 4 times more for the families, with males being earninghand (OR=4.57; 95% CI= 1.19-18.31). Similarly, there exist higher odds of gender discrimination in lowincomefamilies (OR=5.10; 95% CI= 1.18-23.87). While maternal education reduces the chances of fooddiscrimination (OR=0.10; 95% CI= 0.02-0.42) Conclusions: Psychosocial factors such as large familysize, low monthly income, males being earning hand and maternal education were found to be associatedwith gender discrimination regarding food distribution among family members.