Land-Use Changes, Nutrition, and Gender Roles in Indonesian Farm Households

Oil palm has been claimed as one of the major drivers for the land-use change in Indonesia. Research regarding the environmental degradation and biodiversity loss because of oil palm has been performed massively. However, how the land-use change influence the household nutrition and gender roles are still limited known. We analyze the association between land-use change in Jambi, Indonesia with dietary quality and gender roles of smallholder farm households. Results show that oil palm liberates women and men from the on-farm employment, but it only increases the men s participation in off-farm employment. It is the education - of both men and women in the household - which increases off-farm employment for women. We find positive effects of oil palm adoption on the household nutrition. However, it is not achieved through women empowerment while women participation in off-farm could help increase the household nutrition significantly. This suggests that improving household wealth and promoting women s participation in the off-farm sector could have a significant impact on household s dietary quality in Jambi, Sumatra. Keywords: oil palm cultivation, smallholder livelihoods, women s role, gender, nutrition, dietary quality, Indonesia Acknowledgement : This study was financially supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the framework of the collaborative German-Indonesian research project CRC990, the University of G ttingen. The authors also thank the Indonesian government who give the scholarship to the first author through the Indonesian Endowment Fund for Education scheme.