Socio-cultural factors influencing the nutrition of girls and women in rural Maharashtra, India

A recent study of maternal nutrition and fetal growth in rural Maharashtra (the Pune Maternal Nutrition Study) showed that maternal size and body composition are strong determinants of fetal growth and that women had lower BMIs than their menfolk. This study aimed to examine, in the same population, the social and cultural factors at both community and household level, which lead to gender differences in the nutritional status of adults and children. Focus group discussions were used to obtain the community's viewpoint on the causes of the low nutritional status of women. Sons and daughters are treated equally in terms of provision of food and health care, although families prefer sons as future name bearers for the family. In contrast, marriage brings several changes for young women, which add together to reduce her nutritional status. They include a significant increase in workload (both at home and on the farm), and lack of rest and leisure. Furthermore, young women nutritionally deplete themselves by starting to fast, a characteristic ritual after marriage for women. In addition, the new bride is expected to bear a child within a year of marriage. On the other hand, men although working hard on the farm, seldom do any household chores and get rest in the evenings. They eat first in the house, and have freedom and access to cash, enabling them to eat extra snacks and tea in the village. Men are aware of the fact that life for rural women is very hard. The recent change from bride price to dowry, although apparently a retrograde step, is the parents' way of getting their daughters out of this situation and into better-off households.</p

Gender differences in body mass index in rural India are determined by socio-economic factors and lifestyle

A survey of the nutritional status of women in 6 villages of the Pune district of Maharashtra, India, found young women to have a significantly lower BMI than their male peers. The purpose of this study was to identify social and economic factors associated with this difference in thinness and to explore the behavior in men and women that might underlie these associations. We compared men and women in 90 families in this part of Maharashtra by taking measurements of the height and weight of the married couple of child-bearing age in each family and assessing their social and economic details, fasting practices, and oil consumption. In this agricultural community, women were thinner in joint land-owning families, where the main occupation was farming, than those in nonfarming families. This was not true of men in this type of family. Men in "cash-rich" families had higher BMI than men in families without this characteristic. There was no corresponding difference in women's BMI. We then examined the lifestyles of men and women in a subset of 45 of these families. Women were more likely to work full time in farming than men, to carry the burden of all household chores, to have less sleep, and to eat less food away from home than men. Women fasted more frequently and more strictly than men. Despite identifying significant differences in behavior between men and women in the same household, we did not find a direct link between behavior and BMI. We conclude that being married into a farming family is an important factor in determining the thinness of a woman in rural Maharashtra