Policies and programs are becoming increasingly motivated to examine women’s roles in agriculture, food security, and nutrition outcomes. Some even include increased women’s empowerment as an explicit objective. However, strategies to increasing women’s empowerment vary greatly in their objectives, anticipated pathways to empowerment, and monitoring and evaluation approaches.
In 2016, IFPRI launched the Reach, Benefit, Empower framework as a tool to help clarify how different aspects of a project affect women’s pathways to empowerment. These terms refer to project objectives, activities undertaken (strategies), and the ways in which impact is measured (indicators). For instance, reaching women does not guarantee that they will benefit from a project, and women who may benefit (e.g. from increased income or better nutrition) are not necessarily empowered (e.g. in control over that income or making food choices for their households). In 2019, “Transform” was added to the framework, with the goal of having users consider the deeper, structural and normative changes that are needed to shift gender norms and make systems more equitable. The Reach, Benefit, Empower, Transform (RBET) framework is comprised of the following components:
- Reach: Include women in program activities
- Benefit: Increase women’s well-being (e.g. food security, income, health)
- Empower: Strengthen women’s ability to make strategic life choices and to put those choices into action
- Transform: Go beyond the woman and her household to change gender norms and attitudes on a larger scale and address the structural changes needed to create more equitable systems
Overall, the RBET framework helps determine what activities contribute to improving women’s wellbeing and through what mechanisms. The framework may be a useful tool for planners and implementers of agricultural development projects or other initiatives setting out to improve women's empowerment.