Publications

Can a gender-sensitive integrated poultry value chain and nutrition intervention among the rural poor increase women’s empowerment in Burkina Faso?

Understanding the types of food systems interventions that foster women’s empowerment and the types of women that are able to benefit from different interventions is important for development policy. SELEVER was a gender- and nutrition-sensitive poultry production intervention implemented in western Burkina Faso from 2017 to 2020 that aimed to empower women. We evaluated SELEVER using a mixed-methods cluster-randomized controlled trial, which included survey data from 1763 households at baseline and endline and a sub-sample for two interim lean season surveys. We used the multidimensional project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI), which consists of 12 binary indicators, underlying count versions of 10 of these, an aggregate empowerment score (continuous) and a binary aggregate empowerment indicator, all for women and men. Women’s and men’s scores were compared to assess gender parity. We also assessed impacts on health and nutrition agency using the pro-WEAI health and nutrition module. We estimated program impact using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) models and examined whether there were differential impacts by flock size or among those who participated in program activities. Program impacts on empowerment and gender parity were null, despite the program’s careful approach to developing a gender-sensitive intervention. Meanwhile, results of the in-depth gender-focused qualitative work conducted near the project mid-point found there was greater awareness in the community of women’s time burden and their economic contributions, but it did not seem that awareness led to increased empowerment of women. We reflect on possible explanations for the null findings. One notable explanation may be the lack of a productive asset transfer, which have previously been shown to be essential, but not sufficient, for the empowerment of women in agricultural development programs. We consider these findings in light of current debates on asset transfers. Unfortunately, null impacts on women’s empowerment are not uncommon, and it is important to learn from such findings to strengthen future program design and delivery.

Schooling impacts of an unconditional cash transfer program in Mali

In rural West Africa, the rate of out-of-school children is high and delayed entry to primary school is common, particularly for girls. Using the randomized roll-out of an unconditional cash transfer program (Jigisemejiri) in Mali, we examine its impact on child schooling by age and sex. The program leads to significant improvements in schooling outcomes for girls, but not boys. Improvements among girls are especially salient among younger (ages 6–9) and older (ages 15–18) girls. Pathway analysis reveals that the program reduces the time younger girls spend in agricultural work at home and the time older girls spend in domestic work as well as self-employment. Households in the program also spend more on education for older girls in terms of school fees, materials, and transport.

Can agricultural development projects empower women? A synthesis of mixed methods evaluations using pro-WEAI in the gender, agriculture, and assets project (phase 2) portfolio

Agricultural development projects increasingly include women’s empowerment and gender equality among their objectives, but efforts to evaluate their impact have been stymied by the lack of comparable measures. Moreover, the context-specificity of empowerment implies that a quantitative measure alone will be inadequate to capture the nuances of the empowerment process. The Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2), a portfolio of 13 agricultural development projects in nine countries in South Asia and Africa, developed the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) and qualitative protocols for impact evaluations. Pro-WEAI covers three major types of agencies: instrumental, intrinsic, and collective. This paper synthesizes the results of 11 mixed-methods evaluations to assess these projects’ empowerment impacts. The projects implemented the pro-WEAI and its associated qualitative protocols in their impact evaluations. Our synthesis finds mixed, and mostly null impacts on aggregate indicators of women’s empowerment, with positive impacts more likely in the South Asian, rather than African, cases. There were more significant impacts on instrumental agency indicators and collective agency indicators, reflecting the group-based approaches used. We found few significant impacts on intrinsic agency indicators, except for those projects that intentionally addressed gender norms. Quantitative analysis does not show an association between the types of strategies that projects implemented and their impacts, except for capacity building strategies. This finding reveals the limitations of quantitative analysis, given the small number of projects involved. The qualitative studies provide more nuance and insight: some base level of empowerment and forms of agency may be necessary for women to participate in project activities, to benefit or further increase their empowerment. Our results highlight the need for projects to focus specifically on empowerment, rather than assume that projects aiming to reach and benefit women automatically empower them. Our study also shows the value of both a common metric to compare empowerment impacts across projects and contexts and qualitative work to understand and contextualize these impacts.

Understanding the pathways to women’s empowerment in Northern Ghana and the relationship with small-scale irrigation

Women’s empowerment is often an important goal of development interventions. This paper explores local perceptions of empowerment in the Upper East Region of Ghana and the pathways through which small-scale irrigation intervention targeted to men and women farmers contributes to women’s empowerment. Using qualitative data collected with 144 farmers and traders through 28 individual interviews and 16 focus group discussions, this paper innovates a framework to integrate the linkages between small-scale irrigation and three dimensions of women’s empowerment: resources, agency, and achievements. The relationship between the components of empowerment and small-scale irrigation are placed within a larger context of social change underlying these relationships. This shows that many women face serious constraints to participating in and benefitting from small-scale irrigation, including difficulties accessing land and water and gender norms that limit women’s ability to control farm assets. Despite these constraints, many women do benefit from participating in irrigated farming activities leading to an increase in their agency and well-being achievements. For some women, these benefits are indirect—these women allocate their time to more preferred activities when the household gains access to modern irrigation technology. The result is a new approach to understanding women’s empowerment in relation to irrigation technology.

Does the UN Joint Program for Rural Women’s Economic Empowerment (JP RWEE) deliver on its empowerment objectives?

This paper compares the empowerment impacts of the UN Joint Program for Rural Women’s Economic Empowerment (JP RWEE) in Ethiopia, Niger, Nepal, and Kyrgyzstan using the Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI). We assess the extent of empowerment and gender parity, and decompose the sources of disempowerment, separately for men and women and for beneficiary and control groups. We then estimate program impacts on A-WEAI and its component indicators and assess whether estimated impacts are consistent with the activities implemented by the program. We interpret the quantitative results in the light of the qualitative studies undertaken as part of the impact evaluation. Despite the diversity in country and cultural contexts, in all four countries, women are more disempowered than men, although large proportions of men are themselves disempowered. Excessive workload is the most common major contributor to disempowerment, and so is lack of group membership. The program had positive impacts on aggregate empowerment measures for program participants in Niger, Nepal, and Kyrgyzstan. Nevertheless, gender parity improved only in Nepal. The group-based approach was a clear contributor to women’s empowerment in Ethiopia, Nepal, and Kyrgyzstan. In Kyrgyzstan, the GALS/BALI approach contributed to impacts across almost all indicators of empowerment. The positive impact of GALS and GALS/BALI on men and women alike in Kyrgyzstan is consistent with emerging evidence that involving both men and women in gender transformative approaches, rather than focusing on women alone, may be key to effective and sustainable programs. Although impacts on time use were insignificant in the quantitative study, the qualitative work pointed out negative impacts, emphasizing the unintended consequences of increased workload for women who participate in livelihood interventions.

Women’s empowerment and COVID-19: A case study from Kenya

Research shows that the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic varied greatly by country, class, race and gender (Pangborn & Rea, 2020). In this study we aim to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic affected empowered and disempowered individuals differently. This policy note summarizes how income was affected by the pandemic, followed by an assessment of coping mechanisms with the crisis and their interactions with women’s empowerment.

Women's empowerment, extended families and male migration in Nepal: Insights from mixed methods analysis

Highlights •Combining qualitative and quantitative methods sheds new light on women's empowerment processes. •Upper caste Nepali women are disempowered by patriarchy; lower caste women by poverty and patriarchy. •Non-migrant husbands mediate the disempowering effects of living with in-laws. •Control over time, not just hours worked, is an important component of empowerment.

The impacts of rural outmigration on women’s empowerment: Evidence from Nepal, Senegal, and Tajikistan

Using primary survey data collected in Tajikistan, Nepal and Senegal, three countries with high male outmigration rates, this study analyzes the impacts of migration on the empowerment of women who remain in rural areas. The study uses indicators from the Abbreviate Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI) to measure women’s empowerment in five domains (decision-making autonomy around agricultural production, resources, control over income, group membership and workload) and instrumental variable approaches to address the endogeneity between the migration of a family member and women’s empowerment. It finds that male outmigration leads to women’s empowerment in agriculture in some domains and disempowerment in others. In Tajikistan, where women start with low levels of empowerment, women in households with a migrant are more likely to be involved in decisions in productive activities on the household farm, control income, own assets and achieve workload balance than women in non-migrant households. In Nepal and Senegal, women start at higher levels of empowerment and we see fewer differences in their empowerment based on whether they live in a migrant-sending household. The impacts of migration on empowerment depend on the context, whether the household receives remittances or owns land, and women’s position within the household.

Gender and seed entrepreneurism: Case studies in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania

Our paper seeks to identify factors that inhibit and promote women’s success in seed businesses, through three case studies of women’s and men’s entrepreneurship across varying seed-related value chains and country contexts in Africa south of the Sahara. The cases include chicken seed dissemination in Ethiopia and Tanzania, tilapia seed production in Ghana, and marketing and trading of improved maize and sorghum seeds in Kenya. Applying a gender lens, we use qualitative methods to analyze women’s and men’s motivations to engage in seed businesses, the challenges they confront to start and succeed, and prospects for sustainability and continued success. We also use quantitative data to characterize the levels of empowerment of the entrepreneurs sampled. Results show that time flexibility and profitability of the business can be important considerations for women’s engagement in seed entrepreneurship, and the social normative context of the sector is also critical. Furthermore, outside support can be a key factor influencing women’s seed entrepreneurship, per the Kenya case.

Gender-Inclusive, -Responsive and -Transformative Agricultural Insurance: A Literature Review

This literature review uses a gender analysis framework proposed by Johnson et al. (2018) to explore the extent to which agricultural insurance reaches, benefits and empowers women and men. We find that most studies on gender and agricultural insurance focus on gender inclusivity by analyzing gender gaps in insurance reach and studying how to increase take-up among women. By contrast, limited attention has been paid to understanding gender equity in the distribution of insurance outcomes, that is, the extent to which insurance benefits and empowers women as much as men. We show that insurance programs can promote gender equity in benefits by providing quality insurance products that are beneficial to both men and women, and through long-term monitoring of individual outcomes measured within households using gender-disaggregated data. Insurance programs can support gender empowerment by ensuring that contracts purchased by women are registered under their names and payouts are subsequently paid to their accounts, by bundling insurance with empowerment programs, and by preserving and promoting informal mutual assistance group activities and membership. We then draw on a case study in Kenya to illustrate how this framework can be applied to design more gender-inclusive, -responsive and -transformative insurance schemes.

Women's empowerment in agriculture: What role for food security in Bangladesh?

While Bangladesh has experienced steady advances in food production through the adoption of agricultural technologies, chronic food insecurity remains a challenge. Similar to other countries in South Asia, there is a strong gender dimension to food insecurity and malnutrition in Bangladesh. In South Asia, the low status of women and gender gaps in health and education contribute to chronic child malnutrition (Smith et al. 2003) and food insecurity (von Grebmer et al. 2009), even as other determinants of food security, such as per capita incomes, have improved. Renewed interest in agriculture as an engine of inclusive growth and specifically in women’s empowerment has highlighted the need to develop indicators for measuring women’s empowerment, to examine its relationship to various food security outcomes, and to monitor the impact of interventions to empower women.

Assessing women’s empowerment initiatives collaboratively can create positive change

Empowerment (https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-7660.00125) is the process by which people gain the ability to make strategic choices in their lives and to act upon them, when they previously could not. It is a complex, intangible, political, context-specic and multidimensional concept that entails changes at multiple (individual, relational, environmental) levels. Even if assessments of empowerment are imperfect, they can contribute to stronger and more accountable programs and policies. Qualitative and quantitative methods can both yield valuable information for assessing empowerment; combining them can yield comprehensive information that cannot be acquired by using any method alone. Understanding empowerment requires research to embrace and address complexity, to unearth the structural barriers that cause inequality. Our review of 15 tools for measuring women’s empowerment shows that all tools explore agency, but most neglect structural causes of disempowerment. Future research on women’s empowerment should seek to better understand the links between empowerment and agriculture, decision-making processes and situations where positive changes in some dimensions of women’s empowerment can cause setbacks in others.

Signs of change: Evidence on women’s time use, identity, and subjective well-being in rural Bangladesh

We develop an analytical framework based on the work of Akerlof and Kranton (2000) and use it to examine how identity – proxied by agreement with statements reflecting patriarchal notions of gender roles – affects the trade-off between the time women spend on household and care work and their subjective well-being. Analyzing household survey data from rural Bangladesh, we find that longer hours spent on household work are associated with lower levels of subjective well-being among women who hold egalitarian notions of gender roles, while the reverse is true for women who hold patriarchal notions of gender roles. Importantly, this pattern holds only when women strongly identify with patriarchal or egalitarian notions of gender roles. These findings provide insights into how social expectations govern gender roles and, specifically, how gender inequalities persist, at least in part, due to men’s and women’s internalization of traditional gender norms.

Women’s empowerment and gender equality in agricultural value chains: Evidence from four countries in Asia and Africa

Women play important roles at different nodes of both agricultural and off-farm value chains, but in many countries their contributions are either underestimated or limited by prevailing societal norms or gender-specific barriers. We use primary data collected in Asia (Bangladesh, Philippines) and Africa (Benin, Malawi) to examine the relationships between women’s empowerment, gender equality, and participation in a variety of local agricultural value chains that comprise the food system. We find that the value chain and the specific node of engagement matter, as do other individual and household characteristics, but in different ways depending on country context. Entrepreneurship—often engaged in by wealthier households with greater ability to take risks—is not necessarily empowering for women; nor is household wealth, as proxied by their asset ownership. Increased involvement in the market is not necessarily correlated with greater gender equality. Education is positively correlated with higher empowerment of both men and women, but the strength of this association varies. Training and extension services are generally positively associated with empowerment but could also exacerbate the inequality in empowerment between men and women in the same household. All in all, culture and context determine whether participation in value chains—and which node of the value chain—is empowering. In designing food systems interventions, care should be taken to consider the social and cultural contexts in which these food systems operate, so that interventions do not exacerbate existing gender inequalities.

Did a microfinance ‘plus’ programme empower female farmers and pastoralists and improve intrahousehold equality in rural Ethiopia? Evidence from an impact evaluation using a Project-Women’s Empowerment in Agricultural Index (pro-WEAI) survey tool

Using the project-Women’s Empowerment in Agricultural Index (pro-WEAI) survey tool developed by GAAP2, this study aims to estimate the impact of a microfinance ‘plus’ programme on women’s economic empowerment in communities in Oromia and Afar, Ethiopia. The programme incorporates multiple interventions, which are implemented through women-run rural savings and credit cooperatives (RUSACCOs), with the intention of improving beneficiary women’s decision-making over productive assets, control over income, and leadership in rural institutions. A major component of the programme is aimed at rural women’s greater access to credit, but interventions also include agricultural livestock and technology transfers, business training, as well as a community gender awareness component. A difference-in-difference estimator with Inverse Probability Weighting (IPW) is used to evaluate the impact of the programme on women’s empowerment in Oromia. Because of conflict in the area, baseline data collection was delayed and data was collected after some interventions had already begun in Oromia. As such, nearly all beneficiaries already had access to credit through the RUSACCOs at baseline, and both women and men were already empowered in a number of dimensions at baseline. Among households with beneficiaries who continued in good standing between baseline and midline, the programme positively contributed to both women’s and men’s empowerment with regards to respect among household members. It did not lead to additional impacts in terms of overall empowerment and gender parity within the household or across the other pro-WEAI indicators. However, it appears that, by maintaining good standing in the RUSACCOs, female participants were able to maintain high levels of empowerment across the other indicators. A second group of beneficiary women, who either chose to leave the RUSACCO or did not maintain good standing as a member, were also highly empowered across many dimensions at baseline but experienced large average decreases in empowerment across a number of indicators by midline. In Afar, using the midline data only, a single-difference estimator with Inverse Probability Weighting is used to evaluate the impact of the programme. In Afar, the programme had a significant impact on women’s overall empowerment. As we expected, given the nature of the programme, there were significant positive results in terms of access to and decisions on financial services, group membership, and membership in influential groups. There were also positive impacts on control over the use of income, suggesting that the programme contributed to greater control over the use of the output from agricultural activities and control over income from agricultural and non-agricultural activities. On the other hand, the programme also appears to have resulted in reduced empowerment on average with regards to autonomy in income.

Exploring women’s empowerment using a mixed methods approach

Interest in the meaning and measurement of women’s empowerment has become a stated goal of many programs in international development. This paper explores a collaborative process of studying women’s empowerment in agricultural research for development using both quantitative and qualitative methods. It draws on three bodies of research around empowerment, growing interest in qualitative methods, and measurement research, especially the conceptualization and adaptations of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index. Employing mixed methods over more than a decade of cooperation among researchers from the Global South and the Global North has challenged the methods and findings of each approach. The work has led to new insights about gender differences in what empowerment means to women and to men, the importance of context, interrelationships among dimensions of empowerment, and the need for greater precision in terms and measures, particularly around decision-making, asset ownership, and time use. Such collaborative research benefits from a long timeframe to build trust and shared understandings across disciplines. The paper concludes with suggestions for the next phase of research.

Evaluation of the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 gender and empowerment frameworks and tools

Two key outputs of the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2) are the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) and the Reach, Benefit, Empower (RBE) framework. An e-survey was used to get a sense of awareness and use of the pro-WEAI and the RBE framework among a target population of potential users (A4NH program stakeholders). More than 30 semi-structured interviews were conducted with funders, implementers, and evaluators, mainly but not exclusively associated with GAAP2, to understand how tools were used at different stages of the program/project cycle, from influencing program objectives and outcomes to program/project design to impact evaluation. The evaluation found that even though the pro-WEAI and the RBE framework are relatively new and their use is not yet widespread, their use in projects is growing and they have contributed to changes in project priorities and in how projects seeking to empower women are designed and evaluated.

Understanding female and male empowerment in Burkina Faso using the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI): A longitudinal study

Background: Achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment is a major global priority. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the Building the Resilience of Vulnerable Communities in Burkina Faso (BRB) project, an agricultural development program, improved women’s empowerment, as measured by the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI). Methods: This study used a longitudinal, quasi-experimental study design. Participants included both treatment and comparison groups (total N = 751) comprising female members of savings groups and their husbands or main male household member in Burkina Faso. All participants completed the pro-WEAI questionnaire at both baseline and endline. The treatment group received a comprehensive intervention package consisting of agriculture loans and services, microenterprise loans, and education, nutrition education, and women’s empowerment programs including gender-based discussions designed to facilitate personalized changes in gender relations. Results: The proportion of the treatment group achieving empowerment did not change from baseline for women, but improved substantially for men. Women from the comparison group saw an increase in empowerment at endline while men saw a substantial decrease. Gender parity was high for women in both groups at baseline and increased slightly at endline. Women were more likely to have adequate empowerment in input in productive decisions, group membership, and membership in influential groups than men while men were more likely to have adequate empowerment in attitudes about domestic violence, control over use of income, and work balance than women. Participants from the treatment group reported an increase in the average number of empowerment indicators that they were adequate in while the comparison group saw a decrease in average adequacy over time (p = 0.002) after controlling for age, sex, and level of education. Conclusion: Despite starting at an empowerment disadvantage, the treatment group experienced gains in individual indicators of empowerment while the comparison group men and women experienced mixed results, with the women gaining, and the men losing empowerment. This research suggests that the BRB intervention may have provided some protection for the treatment group when they faced an economic down-turn prior to the endline, indicative of household resilience. Future research should consider and strengthen relationships between resilience and empowerment.

Migration, labor and women’s empowerment: Evidence from an agricultural value chain in Bangladesh

As a substantial portion of the rural labor force migrates to urban areas, it is commonly assumed that women could take over traditionally male tasks in agricultural production, with potentially empowering outcomes for women. We study how changes in the supply of labor may influence female labor participation and empowerment outcomes. Using a detailed panel dataset on jute producers in the delta region of Bangladesh, we test whether out-migration of household members and perceived labor shortages are associated with the share of household and hired labor performed by women, and women’s empowerment. When a household experiences reduced household or hired labor supply, we observe a relatively larger use of female household labor, but a reduced share of female hired labor. We also find that reduced labor supply is not associated with significant reductions in gender wage gaps, or enhanced women’s empowerment. These findings suggest that given existing gender norms, male and female labor are not perfect substitutes for one another, and as a result, male outmigration is not associated with improved outcomes for women in cash crop production in the short run. Our results demonstrate a need for better understanding of the role of gender in rural labor markets, particularly in contexts of rapid urbanization.

Changes in women’s empowerment in the household, women’s diet diversity, and their relationship against the background of COVID-19 in Southern Bangladesh

The COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh, associated public health measures, and people’s responses to these measures are projected to have caused job losses among women, who tend to be in more precarious jobs, a decline in women’s empowerment and reduced diet diversity among women. Using a November 2020 telephone survey to re-interview adult women respondents of a November 2019 in-person survey, we test the way and the extent to which women’s employment outside their homes, women’s decision-making power with regard to income use and food purchases, and women’s diet diversity in rural Patuakhali and Faridpur districts changed over the year partly marked by the COVID-19 pandemic. We further examine the relationship between change in women’s empowerment and change in women’s outside employment, and the relationship between change in women’s diet diversity and change in women’s empowerment. Contrary to expectations, we find more women found, rather than lost, jobs over the past year. The chance that women gained outside employment was 12.2 percent, while the chance they lost employment was 3.5 percent. However, we observe a negative trend in women’s involvement in food purchase decisions in their households. Changes in women’s decision-making power over food purchases are not statistically related to change in women’s outside employment. Gaining employment outside the home is associated with a decrease in women’s autonomy over the use of household income. Contrary to expectations, we find the number of food groups consumed by women increased over the year with COVID-19. The chance that women gained achievement of minimum diet diversity over the year is 38 percent; the chance they lost it 11.5 percent; the chance it did not change is 50.5 percent. Change in women’s diet diversity is positively related with change in women’s decision-making power over food purchases but negatively with change in women’s autonomy over income use.

Do tradeoffs among dimensions of women’s empowerment and nutrition outcomes exist? Evidence from six countries in Africa and Asia

Although women’s empowerment and gender equality are often linked with better maternal and child nutrition outcomes, recent systematic reviews find inconclusive evidence. This paper applies a comparable methodology to data on the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), an internationally-validated measure based on interviews of women and men within the same household, from six countries in Africa and Asia to identify which dimensions of women’s empowerment are related to household-, woman-, and child-level dietary and nutrition outcomes. We examine relationships between women’s empowerment and household-level dietary diversity; women’s dietary diversity and BMI; and child-related outcomes, controlling for woman, child, and household characteristics. We also test for differential associations of women’s empowerment with nutrition outcomes for boys and girls. We find few significant associations between the aggregate empowerment scores and nutritional outcomes. The women’s empowerment score is positively associated only with child HAZ, while lower intrahousehold inequality is associated with a higher likelihood of exclusive breastfeeding and higher HAZ but with lower BMI. However, analysis of the subdomain indicators finds more significant associations, suggesting that tradeoffs exist among different dimensions of empowerment. Women’s empowerment accounts for a small share of the variance in nutritional outcomes, with household wealth and country-level factors accounting for the largest share of the variation in household and women’s dietary diversity. In contrast, most of the variation in child outcomes comes from child age. Improving nutritional outcomes requires addressing the underlying determinants of poor nutrition in addition to empowering women and improving gender equality.

“It takes two”: Women’s empowerment in agricultural value chains

This brief summarizes the recent assessment of the implementation of the Agricultural Technical and Vocational Education Training for Women Program (ATVET4Women) that aims to support women and their families with vocational training and market linkages in priority agricultural value chains (VCs). The ATVET4Women program has two main components: formal training and nonformal training. Formal training consists of a 2- or 3-year vocational and technical course at an agricultural training center (ATC) where students gain skills (and a diploma) for employment or entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector. Nonformal training provides farmers with 1 to 3 weeks of training on good production and business management practices.

A qualitative assessment of a gender-sensitive agricultural training program in Benin: Findings on program experience and women’s empowerment across key agricultural value chains

This study presents qualitative findings from an assessment conducted by the International Food Research Institute and Cultural Practice, LLC of the African Union Development Agency-New Partnership for Africa’s Development (AUDA-NEPAD) Agricultural Technical Vocational Education and Training program for women (ATVET4Women) in Benin, supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). ATVET4Women in Benin targets women working in value chains for four target commodities (soy, rice, chicken, and compost) to support capacity building in their respective nodes (production, processing, and marketing). The contributions of this study are multifold. First, it assesses program experiences and impacts. Second, it examines the gender dimensions of production, processing, and marketing activities in four specific value chains. Third, this research is a component of a broader study to adapt and validate the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index for market inclusion (pro-WEAI+MI) on key agricultural value chains in Benin and Malawi for ATVET4Women. This study employed multiple qualitative methods to assess beneficiaries’ program experiences and impacts. Fifteen key informant interviews were conducted with various actors along the value chain and agro-processing center managers involved in ATVET4Women. Thirty-eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with women beneficiaries of ATVET4Women, husbands of beneficiaries, women that were involved in the value chain but did not participate in ATVET4Women, and ATVET4Women trainers. Structured observations were conducted of five ATVET4Women training centers. In general, women beneficiaries and their husbands shared positive reviews of ATVET4Women in that the program increased women’s confidence in their abilities and taught women best practices for producing and selling higher quality products, generating higher incomes for women. Women noted several challenges and barriers to participate in ATVET4Women, including limited availability to travel to or partake in the trainings due to competing demands and priorities on their time, requiring their husbands’ permission to attend, and limited means to support travel to and from trainings. Related to findings around empowerment, results suggest that an empowered woman is closely tied to her ability to generate income, regardless of her decision-making autonomy, whereas an empowered man is one who generates higher incomes and is autonomous in his decision-making. A woman is expected to be submissive to her husband and defer to his decision-making, which holds implications for her ability to participate in activities outside of the household, including but not limited to ATVET4Women and similar programs. This study concludes with specific recommendations for ATVET4Women and similar programs to consider in future iterations of further programming to increase women’s empowerment in Benin.

Pro-WEAI for market inclusion

Many development agencies are designing and implementing value chain interventions that aim to reach, benefit, and empower rural women. Monitoring and evaluating the success of these value chain interventions requires tools to identify the constraints women and men face and to track empowerment across multiple nodes of the value chain. The project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index for market inclusion (pro-WEAI+MI) includes the core pro-WEAI module plus new complementary indicators to investigate barriers to market access and inclusion for different value chain actors. The survey also offers several optional indicators, including access to reliable sanitation and sexual hostility in the working environment, to assess the empowerment environment. These additions and enhancements increase pro-WEAI’s ability to measure and contextualize empowerment and inclusion across value chains.

Women’s empowerment, extended families and male migration in Nepal: Insights from mixed methods analysis

Women’s empowerment is dynamic across the life course, affected not only by age but also by women’s social position within the household. In Nepal, high rates of male outmigration have further compounded household dynamics, although the impact on women’s empowerment is not clear. We use qualitative and quantitative data from Nepal to explore the relationship between women’s social location in the household, caste/ethnicity, husband’s migration status, and women’s empowerment. The study first examines the factors affecting overall empowerment as measured by the Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI), followed by more detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of how each factor affects individual domains including asset ownership, access to and decisions on credit, control over use of income, group membership, input in productive decisions, and work load. We find that women’s empowerment is strongly associated with caste/ethnic identity and position in the household, but this dynamic interacts with husband’s migration status. Despite patriarchal norms of high caste groups, high caste women are more empowered than others, reflecting the disempowering effects of poverty and social exclusion for low caste and ethnic groups. Daughters-in-law in joint households are more likely to be empowered when their husbands are residents in the household and disempowered when their husbands are migrants, while wives in nuclear households are more likely to be empowered when their husbands are migrants. While qualitative findings indicate daughters-in-law are disempowered compared to their mothers-in-law, especially in time use, the quantitative results do not show significant differences, suggesting that we need to move toward an understanding of agency over time and intensity of work, rather than simply hours worked. Identifying the factors that contribute to disempowerment of women of different social positions has important implications for the design of interventions and programs that seek to improve women’s empowerment.

Women’s empowerment and farmland allocations in Bangladesh: Evidence of a possible pathway to crop diversification

Climate change will likely affect several of the dimensions that determine people’s food security status in Bangladesh, from crop production to the availability and accessibility of food products. Crop diversification is a form of adaptation to climate change that reduces exposure to climate-related risks and has also been shown to increase diet diversity, reduce micronutrient deficiencies, and positively affect agro-ecological systems. Despite these benefits, the level of crop diversification in Bangladesh remains extremely low, requiring an examination of the factors that support uptake of this practice. This paper explores whether women’s empowerment, measured using the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), leads to increased diversification in the use of farmland. Our results reveal that some aspects of women’s empowerment in agriculture, but not all, lead to more diversification and to a transition from cereal production to other crops like vegetables and fruits. These findings suggest a possible pathway for gender-sensitive interventions that promote crop diversity as a risk management tool and as a way to improve the availability of nutritious crops.

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index

Intersectionality and addressing equity in agriculture, nutrition, and health

The UN Sustainable Development Goals were established to build a better and more sustainable future for all. Progress toward development objectives has been uneven over time, and the disadvantaged tend to suffer disproportionately, particularly in times of severe shocks or crises like the COVID-19 global pandemic. The inclusion of the phrase “for all” is a good reminder that meeting our global goals will require paying particular attention to equity and ensuring no one is left behind. To consider equity, one must acknowledge that not everyone starts from the same set of circumstances, and assess how unfair, unjust, and exclusionary social and political processes have created that situation. Addressing inequity involves being mindful of those processes and removing barriers that prevent people from participating fully in decisions that determine how goods, opportunities, or resources are distributed. It is subtly, yet importantly, different from equality, which involves ensuring those goods, opportunities, or resources are divided equally among a group. In order to work toward equality, one must ensure equity has been achieved.

Le développement de l’Indice d’Autonomisation des Femmes dans l’Agriculture au niveau projet pour les filières agro-alimentaires (pro-WEAI+MI): Une application au Bénin du programme d’Education et de Formation Technique et Professionnelle Agricole pour les Femmes (EFTPA/F)

Cette étude comprend les résultats de la collaboration entre l’Institut International de Recherche sur les Politiques Alimentaires (IFPRI) et l’Agence d’exécution de l’Union Africaine du Nouveau Partenariat pour le Développement de l'Afrique (AUDA-NEPAD) avec le soutien du Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). Les objectifs communs du projet étaient, en premier lieu, de développer l’Indice d’Autonomisation des Femmes dans l’Agriculture au Niveau Projet pour les Filières Agro-alimentaires (pro-WEAI+MI) 1 pour mesurer les changements dans l’autonomisation des femmes participantes et d’adapter l’outil au contexte africain (projet au Malawi), et, ensuite, d’évaluer le programme d’EFTPA pour les femmes au Bénin.

Methods for measuring women's empowerment

Women’s empowerment is of paramount importance for multiple development goals. However, it is much easier to discuss the importance of empowerment than it is to define the methods and tools needed to measure it. This requires research focused on the conceptual understanding of how we should measure women’s empowerment, in a variety of facets, and the creation of tools and methods for doing so.

Gender and food security in Honduras

This study, supported by the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV), obtained information on a range of topics associated with food security and nutrition, gender, and water access in selected villages of Honduras. The data collection prioritized a set of communities of interest to the civil society organizations that are part of the Voice for Change Program in Honduras. The data collection, done in 2018, covered 647 households across the departments of Choluteca, Lempira, and Ocotepeque. Most households surveyed face high levels of food insecurity. Only 26% of the women between 12 and 49 years are receiving the minimum dietary diversity. Access to water and sanitation is also limited with 30% of the households sourcing their water from a well or river and 51% not treating the water before drinking it. According to the Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI) only 34% of women sampled are considered empowered. The survey results indicate that the biggest hurdles to women’s empowerment are the amount of time spent working and limited decision-making power regarding accessing credit and productive activities.

Project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture: Results from cognitive testing in Myanmar

When designing and evaluating policies and projects for women’s empowerment, appropriate indicators are needed. This paper reports on the lessons learned from two rounds of pretesting and cognitive testing of the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) in a total of five States/Regions in Myanmar. We assess if respondents understand the modules as intended and which questions require modification based on the cultural context. We find that the questions also present in the abbreviated WEAI are generally well understood, particularly on instrumental and group agency. The challenge to respond to hypothetical and abstract questions did become apparent in the domains representing intrinsic agency, and was problematic for questions on autonomy and self-efficacy. Also, the internationally validated questions on attitudes towards domestic violence were too abstract, and responses depend on the scenario envisioned. We also suggest including an adapted version of the module on speaking up in public, to reinforce the domain on collective agency. Our findings provide an encouraging message to those aspiring to use pro-WEAI, but emphasize the need for continued attention for context-specific adjustments and critical testing of even those instruments that are widely used and deemed validated.

Learning together: Experimental evidence on the impact of group-based nutrition interventions in rural Bihar

Despite improvements over the last decade or more, India still accounts for a large proportion of the global prevalence of maternal and child undernutrition. We use a cluster-randomized controlled design and two waves of panel data on more than 2000 households from Bihar to analyse the impact on diet quality and anthropometry of a health and nutrition intervention delivered through an at-scale women’s self-help group (SHGs) platform. We find that the intervention had small but significant impacts on women and children’s dietary diversity, with the main impacts coming from an increase in the consumption of fruits and vegetables and dairy, however, it had no impact on women’s body mass index. We identify several potential pathways to impact. To the extent that SHGs can effect broad-based social change, their current reach to millions of women makes them a powerful platform for accelerating improvements in maternal and child health and nutrition outcomes.

Women’s empowerment in agriculture and nutritional outcomes: Evidence from six countries in Africa and Asia

Although women’s empowerment and gender equality are associated with better maternal and child nutrition outcomes, recent systematic reviews find inconclusive evidence. This paper applies a comparable methodology to data on the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), a recent internationally-validated measure based on interviews of women and men within the same household, from six countries in Africa and Asia to identify which dimensions of women’s empowerment are related to household-, women-, and child-level dietary and nutrition outcomes. We examine the relationship between women’s empowerment and household-level food security and dietary diversity; women’s dietary diversity and BMI; and child-related outcomes, controlling for woman, child, and household characteristics. We also test whether women’s empowerment has differential associations for boys and girls. We do not find consistent associations between dimensions of empowerment and food security and nutrition outcomes across countries, but some patterns emerge. Overall empowerment scores are more strongly associated with nutritional outcomes in the South Asian countries in our sample compared to the African ones. Where significant, greater intrahousehold gender equality is associated with better nutritional outcomes. However, different domains have different associations with nutritional outcomes, suggesting that tradeoffs exist: higher workloads are associated with more diverse diets but lower women’s BMI and child anthropometric outcomes. Identifying the overlap between the top contributors to disempowerment and those most strongly related to nutrition outcomes can inform the design and implementation of nutrition-sensitive agricultural programs.

Instructional guide on the abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI)

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) is a survey-based index designed to measure the empowerment, agency, and inclusion of women in the agricultural sector. The WEAI was initially developed in 2012 as a tool to reflect changes in women’s empowerment that may result from the US government’s Feed the Future Initiative, which commissioned the development of the WEAI. However, the WEAI has also been used extensively since 2012 by a variety of organizations to assess the state of empowerment and gender parity in agriculture, to identify key areas in which empowerment needs to be strengthened, and to track progress over time.

Poultry production in Burkina Faso: Potential for poverty reduction and women’s empowerment

Poultry rearing is widespread in rural Burkina Faso, and contributes to both the food security and cash income of smallholders farmers. The landlocked status of the country, coupled with increasing demand for poultry in urban areas implies an opportunity for significant, pro-poor growth through this sector. We use data from a survey of 1800 poultry producers to characterize smallholder poultry producers and their practices. We find that 88% of households in program areas raised poultry. While access to vaccination services and veterinary medicines at the village level is high, uptake of these services is limited, especially among smaller producers. Fewer women than men own poultry, but most women report that they control the proceeds from sales of their own birds, indicating the potential for development of the poultry sector to generate relatively equitable gains in terms of gender. Access to credit appears to increase women’s poultry ownership, but remains limited, as does women’s access to poultry output markets.

Replication Data for "Development of the Project-Level Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI)"

The project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) is a survey-based index designed for use by agriculture development projects to measure project impacts on women’s empowerment, diagnose areas of women’s disempowerment, and inform strategies to address deficiencies in specific settings. Pro-WEAI was developed jointly by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), and 13 agricultural development projects in Africa and South Asia as part of the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2). Pro-WEAI is an adaptation of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), originally developed in 2012 by IFPRI, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and OPHI. This data package contains baseline data from five GAAP2 projects and Stata .do files necessary for replicating the results of Malapit et al. (2019). The data include all items needed to calculate pro-WEAI, as well as the basic demographic information (gender and household type) used in the analysis.

Empowerment in agricultural value chains: Mixed methods evidence from the Philippines

Women’s participation and empowerment in value chains are goals that concern many development organizations, but there has been limited systematic, rigorous research to track these goals between and within value chains (VCs). We use the survey-based project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) to measure women’s and men’s empowerment in the abaca, coconut, seaweed, and swine VCs in the Philippines. Results show that most women and men in all four VCs are disempowered, but unlike in many other countries, Filipino women in this sample are generally as empowered as men. Pro-WEAI results suggest that respect within the household and attitudes about gender-based violence (GBV) are the largest sources of disempowerment for both women and men, followed by control over use of income and autonomy in income-related decisions. Excessive workload and lack of group membership are other important sources of disempowerment, with some variation across VCs and nodes along VCs. Across all four VCs, access to community programs is associated with higher women’s empowerment, and access to extension services and education are associated with higher men’s empowerment. Our results show that, despite the egalitarian gender norms in the Philippines, persistent gender stereotypes influence men’s and women’s empowerment and VC participation.

Agriculture and undernutrition through the lens of economics

Agricultural development has historically focused on poverty reduction and food security but is now increasingly asked to help improve nutrition. Despite this strengthened nutritional mandate, agricultural policies and programs have struggled to develop effective, scalable and cost-effective approaches for reducing undernutrition. This study was therefore undertaken to assess more the more strategic issue of how to re-design agricultural development strategies for greater nutritional impact. To do so we review the literature on agriculture-nutrition linkages through an economic lens, focusing on systemic agriculture-nutrition linkages that go beyond the much-explored question of how a farm family’s agricultural activities affect their own household members’ food consumption or nutrition outcomes. To that end we structured this review around three types of linkages between agriculture and nutrition: (i) agricultural income effects (including income stability); (ii) relative food price determination (including the shadow prices involved in consuming one’s own production); and (iii) agricultural livelihood characteristics (encompassing the many neglected dimensions of agricultural activities and rural livelihoods that influence nutrition and health). For each of these literatures we reflect upon relevant economic theory, methodological challenges, and key empirical evidence. We conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of these findings for developing more nutrition-sensitive agricultural development strategies.

Gender effects of agricultural cropping work and nutrition status in Tanzania

Although agriculture is an important source of food and income for food expenditures, women’s involvement in the agricultural cropping production process could increase their work load and reduce their BMI. Using three waves of the Tanzania National Panel Survey, we investigate the extent to which time spent in agricultural crop production affects women and men’s nutritional status among non-overweight individuals (age 20–65). We also test whether the impact of agricultural cropping work on nutritional status is modified by access to agricultural equipment, and whether gender differences exist. The study finds that time spent in agricultural cropping work is negatively associated with BMI for non-overweight individuals, albeit of small magnitude, and this finding is consistent across different crop production processes. This suggests that agricultural interventions should not ignore the implications of increasing work intensities on nutrition. While increased agricultural production could improve nutritional status by increasing agricultural income and food, the gains in nutritional status could be offset by an increase in work effort of doing agricultural work. Our results suggest that it is possible that access to equipment reduced effort for one production activity, but increased work for other activities in the production process, such as in harvesting. Furthermore, we find that the BMI of women in households with a hand powered sprayer is positively related to time spent in weeding, fertilizing, and non-harvest activities, while it is negatively correlated for men. It is possible that access to a hand powered sprayer may have helped reduce women’s work, for example, in weeding, while this was not the case for men’s work such as in ridging and fertilizing. Further disaggregation of agricultural activities in the dataset would have been helpful to provide more insights on the gender roles.

Food systems, obesity, and gender in Latin America

With more than half the population affected by overweight (58%) and almost a quarter (23%) suffering from obesity, Latin America is experiencing an unprecedented health crisis that impacts most of the countries in the region (FAO 2017). Across Latin America, one in four people are obese, and the trend is still critically higher and more prevalent among women than men. The region faces a triple burden of malnutrition, determined by undernutrition, micronutrient deficiency, and overweight and obesity. The topic is very complex, multisectoral, and must be studied from different viewpoints (Allen, de Brauw, and Gelli, 2016; FAO-PAHO, 2016; Gelli et al., 2015; HLPE, 2017; IPES-FOOD, 2016; Townsend, Jaffee, Hoberg, and Htenas, 2016). There is evidence showing that certain groups are more affected, which is the case with women. The impact on other groups and ages varies by country, geographical regions, the urban/rural divide, income and education levels, and ethnic origin. This paper explores the existing linkages connecting the food system, trends in overweight and obesity, and the gender divide in Latin America from the point of view of women, who seem to be disproportionally affected by this health condition than their male counterparts. This literature review explores different dimensions of specific roles and conditions that influence women’s health and nutrition in Latin America, including (a) women as farmers and other affected groups such as indigenous peoples; (b) women’s role and participation in feeding schemes; (c) women as informal street food vendors; (d) women as traders of agricultural products; (e) women as workers in the agrifood industry; and (f) considerations regarding the time invested in food preparation at the household level and women’s participation in this task. Other themes to take into account are the effects of rural poverty and gender inequality on these populations across Latin America and the Caribbean. It is a matter of urgency to understand the underlying causes of some populations’ being more affected by overweight and obesity than others, as this will allow governments to design policies that tackle those problems at their root. The goal of this review is to provide information that can help to develop efficient and equitable interventions and targeted policies to reduce the current trends of overweight and obesity in Latin America.

WEAI Resource Center Website

Women are key to agricultural transformation in developing countries, but various obstacles and economic constraints limit their contributions to their households and communities. The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) is an innovative tool that seeks to identify such obstacles, and may be used to track gender equality and measure empowerment, agency, and women’s inclusion in the agricultural sector.

The role of empowerment in agricultural production: evidence from rural households in Niger

Women’s empowerment and child nutrition in polygynous households of Northern Ghana

Weather shocks and other shocks affecting the economy of farm households often trigger a cascade of coping mechanisms, from reducing food consumption to selling assets, with potentially lasting consequences on child development. In polygynous households (in which a man is married to several women), the factors that may aggravate or mitigate the impacts of such adverse events are still poorly understood. In particular, little is known about the complex mechanisms through which women’s empowerment may affect the allocation of household resources in the presence of more than one female decision-maker. Where polygyny is associated with discriminatory social norms, co-wives may have limited bargaining power, which may translate into poorer outcomes for their children. While competition between co-wives may generate inefficiencies in the allocation of household resources, cooperation in the domains of agricultural production or domestic labor may lead to economies of scale and facilitate informal risk sharing. The rank of each co-wife may also have a strong influence on the welfare of her own children, relative to other children. Using the Feed the Future Ghana Population Survey data, I investigate the relationship between polygyny and children’s nutrition, and how it may be mediated through women’s bargaining power. Using the age of each co-wife as a proxy for rank, I also study how the senior-wife status of a mother may influence her children’s nutrition outcomes.

Measurement properties of the Project-Level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index

Given the need for valid measures of women’s empowerment to monitor SDG5 and design advantages of pro-WEAI, an assessment of its measurement properties is warranted. This paper has three aims: 1) to assess in two GAAP2 projects the measurement properties of survey question (item) sets used to compute pro-WEAI indicators, 2) to offer guidance, based on study findings, for questionnaire revisions to shorten the full pro-WEAI to improve it as a measure for women’s empowerment in agricultural development programs, and 3) to make a call for a validated ‘short form’1 version of pro-WEAI and improved measures of women’s collective agency.

Development of the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI)

In this paper, the authors describe the adaptation and validation of a project-level WEAI (or pro-WEAI) that agricultural development projects can use to identify key areas of women’s (and men’s) disempowerment, design appropriate strategies to address identified deficiencies, and monitor project outcomes related to women’s empowerment. The 12 pro-WEAI indicators are mapped to three domains: intrinsic agency (power within), instrumental agency (power to), and collective agency (power with). A gender parity index compares the empowerment scores of men and women in the same household. The authors describe the development of pro-WEAI, including: (1) pro-WEAI’s distinctiveness from other versions of the WEAI; (2) the process of piloting pro-WEAI in 13 agricultural development projects during the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, phase 2 (GAAP2); (3) analysis of quantitative data from the GAAP2 projects, including intrahousehold patterns of empowerment; and (4) a summary of the findings from the qualitative work exploring concepts of women’s empowerment in the project sites. The paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned from pro-WEAI and possibilities for further development of empowerment metrics.

Women’s empowerment in agriculture: Lessons from qualitative research

There is growing recognition of the importance of women’s empowerment in its own right and for a range of development outcomes, but less understanding of what empowerment means to rural women and men. The challenge of measuring empowerment, particularly across cultures and contexts, is also garnering attention. This paper synthesizes qualitative research conducted conjointly with quantitative surveys, working with eight agricultural development projects in eight countries, to develop a project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI). The qualitative research sought to identify emic meanings of “empowerment,” validate the domains and indicators of the quantitative index, provide greater understanding of the context of each project and of strategies for facilitating empowerment, and test a methodology for integrating emic perspectives of empowerment with standardized etic measures that allow for comparability across contexts.

How do agricultural development projects empower women? Linking strategies with expected outcomes

Increasing numbers of development agencies and individual projects espouse objectives of women’s empowerment, and there is a growing body of conceptual and empirical work on how to define and measure empowerment. What is missing is an evidence base on how and how much agricultural development projects can contribute to empowerment. What activities or combinations of activities contribute to empowerment, through what mechanisms, and in what contexts? While it will take time to fill that gap, this paper makes two contributions in that direction. First, it develops a framework for clarifying the objectives of development projects that differentiates between projects that seek to reach, benefit or empower women. Next, the paper identifies and analyzes the strategies of 13 agricultural development projects that were designed to empower women. Strategies are analyzed in terms of activities undertaken and domains of empowerment targeted. While strategies vary across projects, they have several characteristics in common that would be expected to contribute to empowerment.

Women’s empowerment in agriculture and dietary quality across the life course: Evidence from Bangladesh

Using nationally-representative survey data from rural Bangladesh, we examine the relationship between women’s empowerment in agriculture and indicators of individual dietary quality. Our findings suggest that women’s empowerment is associated with better dietary quality of individuals within the household, but the strength of this association varies across the life course. Women’s empowerment is correlated with more diverse diets of children under five, but empowerment measures are not consistently associated with increases in nutrient intake for this age group. Rather, maternal schooling and household socio-economic status play a more important role for younger children. Women’s empowerment is positively and significantly associated with adult men’s and women’s dietary diversity and nutrient intakes. Empowerment does not benefit all individuals within the household equally, with gender bias emerging in adolescence. Variations in the strength of the association between women’s empowerment and different individuals’ dietary quality across the life course has implications for the design and targeting of interventions to improve dietary quality, particularly of women, children, and adolescent girls.

Qualitative research on women’s empowerment and participation in agricultural value chains in Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, IFPRI has received support from USAID through its Policy Research and Strategy Support Program in Bangladesh (PRSSP) to work in the geographic areas targeted by Feed the Future interventions (known as the Zone of Influence) to construct this new WEAI4VC module. The qualitative research study, conducted by IFPRI field officers, complements a 1,200 household quantitative survey, looking in greater depth at the individual, household, and community level experiences of men and women to understand the consequences of value chain participation on them as producers, entrepreneurs, and wage workers on women’s empowerment. The quantitative study sampled 400 households for each of the three economic activities of interest – (1) agricultural production, (2) agricultural entrepreneurship, and (3) agriculture sector employment. It was carried out in ten administrative units (upazilas or sub-districts), and five villages in each upazila to total 50 villages.

Tracking empowerment along the value chain: Testing a modified WEAI in the Feed the Future Zone of Influence in Bangladesh

Upon request of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) conducted this study to support USAID in assessing the state of empowerment and gender parity of men and women along the agricultural value chain in the Feed the Future (FTF) Zone of Influence (ZOI) in Bangladesh. Specifically, IFPRI’s Policy Research and Strategy Support Program (PRSSP), funded by USAID, piloted the modified Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) survey instruments in 10 upazilas (sub-districts) within the FTF ZOI across 1,200 households, which broadly belong to three economic activities of interest: (1) agricultural production, (2) agricultural entrepreneurship, and (3) agricultural sector employment. The quantitative survey was complemented by qualitative research to glean further insights into the facilitators and constraints of empowerment among various actors in the agricultural value chain. The data and analysis generated from this WEAI for Value Chain (WEAI4VC) study may inform USAID’s selection and design of interventions that may, in turn, maximize its programmatic impact on women and men’s empowerment as producers, entrepreneurs, and wage employees.

Empowerment, climate change adaptation and agricultural production: Evidence from Niger

We use new household level data from Niger and regression analysis to study the role of drought perception and human capital – including empowerment – in climate change adaptation through the digging of zaї pits and effects of these pits on agricultural productivity. We find that selection of households into adoption of zaï pits is influenced by the perception that the frequency of droughts has increased. More educated, experienced, and empowered households are also more likely to have put in place zaï pits. Accounting for endogeneity of adoption, zaї pits are found to significantly increase cereal yields. Our counterfactual analysis reveals that even though all households would benefit from adoption of zai pits, the effect would be significantly larger for households that did not adopt if they had adopted. For the latter group, empowerment in particular is associated with significantly higher yields.

Context and measurement: An analysis of the relationship between intrahousehold decision making and autonomy

Using data from two culturally distinct locales, Bangladesh and Ghana, we investigate whether men and women who report sole decision making in a particular domain experience stronger (or weaker) feelings of autonomous motivation—measured using the Relative Autonomy Index (RAI)—compared to those who report joint decision making. Used primarily in psychology, the RAI measures the extent to which an individual’s actions are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated, where higher scores indicate greater autonomy. On aggregate, we find differences between men and women, and across countries, in the significance of association between the individual’s level of participation in decision-making and autonomy. In addition, we find heterogeneity in the strength of this association, depending on the domain (e.g., productive versus personal decisions) and whether partners agree on who normally makes decisions. These findings imply that details related to context and measurement matter for understanding individual decision-making power. We argue that all research using information on decision-making should include a careful analysis of men’s and women’s perceptions of decision making within the household, which may be useful for calibrating indicators to suit spicific contexts

Does women's time in domestic work and agriculture affect women's and children's dietary diversity? Evidence from Bangladesh, Nepal, Cambodia, Ghana, and Mozambique

There are concerns that increasing women’s engagement in agriculture could negatively affect nutrition by limiting the time available for nutrition-improving reproductive work. However, very few empirical studies provide evidence to support these concerns. This paper examines the relationship between women’s time spent in domestic work and agriculture and women’s and children’s dietary diversity. Using data from Bangladesh, Nepal, Cambodia, Ghana, and Mozambique, we find that women’s domestic work and cooking time are positively correlated with more diverse diets. We also find differential effects depending on asset poverty status. In Mozambique, working long hours in agriculture is negatively associated with women’s dietary diversity score in nonpoor women, but is positively associated with poor women’s dietary diversity and poor children’s minimum acceptable diet. This suggests that agriculture as a source of food and income is particularly important for the asset poor. Our results reveal that women’s time allocation and nutrition responses to agricultural interventions are likely to vary by socioeconomic status and local context.

Women's self-help groups, decision-making, and improved agricultural practices in India: From extension to practice

This research was undertaken as part of the Women Improving Nutrition through Group-based Strategies (WINGS) study, and was aimed at understanding ways to improve agricultural practices among women farmers in India. Effective agricultural extension is key to improving productivity, increasing farmers’ access to information, and promoting more diverse sets of crops and improved methods of cultivation. In India, however, the coverage of agricultural extension workers and the relevance of extension advice is poor. We investigate whether a women’s self-help group platform could be an effective way of improving access to information, women’s empowerment in agriculture, agricultural practices, and production diversity. We use cross-sectional data on close to 1000 women from 5 states in India, and employ nearest-neighbor matching models to match self-help group (SHG) and non-SHG women along a range of observed characteristics. We find that participation in an SHG increases women’s access to information and their participation in some agricultural decisions, but has limited impact on agricultural practices or outcomes, possibly due to financial constraints, social norms, and women’s domestic responsibilities. SHGs need to go beyond provision of information to changing the dynamics around women’s participation in agriculture to effectively translate knowledge into practice.

Women’s empowerment in agriculture and agricultural productivity: Evidence from rural maize farmer households in western Kenya

This paper documents a positive relationship between maize productivity in western Kenya and women’s empowerment in agriculture, measured using indicators derived from the abbreviated version of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index. Applying a cross-sectional instrumental-variable regression method to a data set of 707 maize farm households from western Kenya, we find that women’s empowerment in agriculture significantly increases maize productivity. Although all indicators of women’s empowerment significantly increase productivity, there is no significant association between the women’s workload (amount of time spent working) and maize productivity. Furthermore, the results show heterogenous effects with respect to women’s empowerment on maize productivity for farm plots managed jointly by a male and female and plots managed individually by only a male or female. More specifically, the results suggest that female- and male-managed plots experience significant improvements in productivity when the women who tend them are empowered. These findings provide evidence that women’s empowerment contributes not only to reducing the gender gap in agricultural productivity, but also to improving, specifically, productivity from farms managed by women. Thus, rural development interventions in Kenya that aim to increase agricultural productivity—and, by extension, improve food security and reduce poverty—could achieve greater impact by integrating women’s empowerment into existing and future projects.

Empowering women, enhancing nutrition, and ending poverty: IFPRI and Canada

Global changes with wide-reaching impacts include rapid urbanization, climate change, conflict-driven migration, and dietary transitions as well as uncertainty regarding trade and foreign investment. More than ever, responding to these challenges will require a systems-oriented, multidisciplinary approach to reshaping agriculture and food systems so that they work for everyone. IFPRI will spearhead research to understand and address these trends, build evidence for sound policies at the country and regional levels, and continue to focus on empowering women. IFPRI’s long-standing partnership with Canada has generated cutting-edge research in support of improved food security and nutrition, particularly for women and children, and gender equity, and IFPRI looks forward to continuing to work together to end hunger and malnutrition.

Using natural areas and empowering women to buffer food security and nutrition from climate shocks: Evidence from Ghana, Zambia, and Bangladesh

As climate change makes precipitation shocks more common, policymakers are becoming increasingly interested in protecting food systems and nutrition outcomes from the damaging effects of droughts and floods (Wheeler and von Braun, 2013). Increasing the resilience of nutrition and food security outcomes is especially critical throughout agrarian parts of the developing world, where human subsistence and well-being are directly affected by local rainfall. In this study, we use data from Feed the Future datasets from Ghana, Zambia, and Bangladesh to examine the impact of precipitation extremes on food security as well as the role of natural land cover and women’s empowerment in creating resilience. We first model the effects of extreme rainfall on indicators of nutrition and food security, and then examine whether women’s empowerment and environmental land cover types can dampen the effects of rainfall shocks on these food security and nutrition outcomes. Our results find that there is a strong association between extreme precipitation and household hunger. Further, they suggest that in certain contexts land cover types providing ecosystem services can reduce household hunger scores, that empowering women can mitigate the effects of precipitation shocks, and that there may be an interactive effect between ecosystem service availability and women’s empowerment.

Review: Time use as an explanation for the agri-nutrition disconnect? Evidence from rural areas in low and middle-income countries

Time is a vital input into nutritional outcomes, as it is necessary for the production, procurement and preparation of food, child feeding and childcare. Thus, agricultural interventions may fail to improve nutritional outcomes if they do not take account of time constraints, particularly of rural women who spend a considerable portion of their time in agriculture. Given the potential trade-offs pertaining to time in productive vs. reproductive activities and its implications for maternal and child nutrition, the goal of this review is to systematically map and assess the available evidence, both qualitative and quantitative studies, agriculture-time use-nutrition pathway. Through an analysis of 89 studies, identified through a systematic search, on rural areas of low and middle-income countries, we observe three findings. First, women play a key role in agriculture, as reflected in their time commitments. Second, evidence from a very limited set of studies suggests that agricultural interventions tend to increase time commitments in agriculture of the household members for whom impact is measured. Third, while changing time use tends to change nutritional outcomes, it does so in a range of complex ways and there is no agreement on the impact. Nutritional impacts are varied because households and household members respond to increased time burden and workload in different ways.

Women’s empowerment in agriculture and dietary quality across the life course: Evidence from Bangladesh

Using nationally representative survey data from rural Bangladesh, this paper examines the relationship between women’s empowerment in agriculture and indicators of individual dietary quality. Our findings suggest that women’s empowerment is associated with better dietary quality for individuals within the household, with varying effects across the life course. Women’s empowerment is associated with more diverse diets for children younger than five years, but empowerment measures are not consistently associated with increases in nutrient intake for this age group. Women’s empowerment is positively and significantly associated with adult men’s and women’s dietary diversity and nutrient intakes. Different empowerment domains may have different impacts on nutrition, but other characteristics, such as maternal schooling and household socioeconomic status, may play a more important role for younger children. The importance of maternal education in the dietary quality of young children, and the relatively greater importance of women’s empowerment for older children and adults, imply that policies designed to empower women and improve nutritional status should be informed by knowledge of which specific domains of women’s empowerment matter for particular nutritional outcomes at specific stages of the life course.

Response to Garcia and Wanner “gender inequality and food security: lessons for the gender-responsive work of the international food policy research institute and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” Food Security (2017) 9:1091–1103

The paper by Garcia and Wanner reviews examples of genderresponsive research and programming from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to discuss those genderresponsive approaches which are most successful for achieving women’s empowerment in agricultural development. It notes accomplishments and points out some shortcomings for both organizations to address. Although the objectives of the paper are worthwhile, we note important problems regarding methodology used, factual errors, and misrepresentation.

Using cognitive interviewing to improve the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index survey instruments: Evidence from Bangladesh and Uganda

The purpose of cognitive interviewing is to systematically identify and analyze sources of response error in surveys, and to use that information to improve the quality and accuracy of survey instruments. This paper describes the cognitive interviews undertaken in Bangladesh and Uganda in 2014 as part of the second round of pilots intended to refine the original version of the Women’s Empowerment in Agricultural Index (WEAI). The WEAI is a survey-based tool that assesses gendered empowerment in agriculture. Baseline data were collected in 19 countries, but implementers reported some problems, such as confusion among both respondents and enumerators regarding the meaning of abstract concepts in the autonomy sub-module and difficulties recalling the sequence and duration of activities in the time-use sub-module. The results revealed potential problems with the survey questions and informed the revision of the WEAI, called the Abbreviated WEAI (or A-WEAI), which has less potential for response errors.

Women's empowerment in agriculture: Implications for technical efficiency in rural Bangladesh

Although a great deal of research exists on gender and agriculture, few studies investigate the implications of reduced gender disparities in households for technical efficiency. In this article, I compare the levels of technical efficiency achieved on plots operated by households with different levels of gender disparities. Using plot‐level data from the 2011–2012 Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey and drawing on indicators derived from the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index, I estimate a stochastic frontier production function model, which includes women's empowerment in agriculture as an exogenous determinant of technical inefficiency. I find that reduced gender disparities within households (measured in terms of the empowerment gap between spouses) are associated with higher levels of technical efficiency. This result extends to plots that women jointly manage with their spouses, as well as those that women do not actively manage.

Empowerment, climate change adaptation, and agricultural production: Evidence from Niger

We use new household level data from Niger and regression analysis to study the role of drought perception and human capital—including empowerment—in climate change adaptation through the digging of zaї pits and effects of these pits on agricultural productivity. We find that selection of households into adoption of zaï pits is influenced by the perception that the frequency of droughts has increased. More educated, experienced, and empowered households are also more likely to have put in place zaï pits. Accounting for endogeneity of adoption, zaї pits are found to significantly increase cereal yields. Our counterfactual analysis reveals that even though all households would benefit from adoption of zai pits, the effect would be significantly larger for households that did not adopt if they had adopted. For the latter group, empowerment in particular is associated with significantly higher yields.

Empowerment, adaptation, and agricultural production evidence from Niger

Located at the heart of West Africa, Niger is a landlocked country with three-quarters of its territory covered by the Sahara Desert. Niger’s climate is mostly arid, and it is one of the least developed countries in the world. The vast majority of its population lives in rural areas, and the country is strongly dependent on agriculture. Agriculture is predominantly rainfed and yields rely on one rainy season. Although productivity in Niger has shown a positive trend, agriculture has been strongly affected in recent decades by several crises partly or entirely due to extreme weather events. Farmers pursue a number of strategies in the face of climatic (and nonclimatic) stressors including soil and water conservation methods such as barriers, terracing, and planting pits, and their adaptive capacity is deemed critical for estimating the economic impact of climate change. An understanding of climate change adaptation processes at the farm household level is therefore crucial to the development of well-designed and targeted mitigation policies. In this study, we use new data from Niger and regression analysis to study climate change adaptation through the digging of zaї pits and food production and the role of human capital measures therein. We find that adaptation is influenced by the perception that the frequency of droughts has increased and by the availability of financial resources and household labor. Adaptation is also influenced by educational attainment—both formal and Koranic school education. Adaptation of zaї pits is found to play an important role in food productivity. Our counterfactual analysis reveals that even though all households would benefit from adaptation, the effect is found to be significantly larger for households that actually did adapt relative to those that did not, indicating that the prospects of closing the productivity gap through encouraging adaptation in less well-endowed households are limited.

Measuring time use in development settings

This paper discusses the challenges associated with collecting time-use data in developing countries. The paper suggests potential solutions, concentrating on the two most common time-use methods used in development settings: stylized questions and time diaries. The paper identifies a significant lack of rigorous empirical research comparing these methods in development settings, and begins to fill this gap by analyzing data from Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index surveys in Bangladesh and Uganda. The surveys include stylized questions and time diary estimates for the same individual. The study finds limited evidence that stylized questions are more feasible (in terms of interview length) but also less accurate, compared with time diaries. These results are attributed to the relatively greater cognitive burden imposed on respondents by stylized questions. The paper discusses the importance of broadening the scope of time-use research to capture the quantity and quality of time, to achieve richer insights into gendered time-use patterns and trends. The paper suggests a path forward that combines mainstream time-use data collection methods with promising methodological innovations from other disciplines.

How do agricultural development projects aim to empower women? Insights from an analysis of project strategies

Increasing numbers of development agencies and individual projects espouse objectives of women’s empowerment, yet there has been little systematic work on mechanisms by which interventions can enhance women’s empowerment. This gap exists because of the lack of consensus on indicators as well as the lack of attention paid to measuring the effects of different types of interventions on empowerment. This paper identifies the types of strategies employed by 13 agricultural development projects within the International Food Policy Research Institute’s Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project Phase 2 (GAAP2) that have explicit objectives of empowering women. We distinguish between reach, benefit, and empowerment as objectives of agricultural development projects. Simply including women does not necessarily benefit them, and even activities that benefit do not necessarily empower. To identify strategies to empower women, we build on the domains included in the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) and are working with the GAAP2 portfolio of projects to develop an empowerment metric that is applicable in the project setting (a project-level WEAI, or pro-WEAI). We have identified the following potential domains to be included in pro-WEAI: input into production decision making, control over resources, control over income, leadership, time, physical mobility, intrahousehold relationships, individual empowerment, reduction in gender-based violence, and decision making on nutrition. The GAAP2 projects address these domains through a wide variety of activities that can be grouped into four main types: (1) direct and indirect provision of goods and services; (2) forming or strengthening groups, organizations, or platforms and networks that involve women; (3) strengthening knowledge and capacity through agricultural extension, business and finance training, nutrition behavior change communication, and other training; and (4) changing gender norms through one-way awareness raising or two-way community conversations about gender issues and their implications. In general, projects with activities in more activity areas target more domains of empowerment, and most projects target a core set of six empowerment domains. With the exception of intrahousehold relationships, which is always targeted by activities designed to influence gender norms, projects target domains with different types of activities or combinations of activities. This setup suggests that there may be no one-to-one link between a specific activity and empowerment benefits, and that implementation modalities will determine whether and how an activity contributes to women’s empowerment. The effectiveness of these project strategies will be assessed using both quantitative and qualitative methods throughout the GAAP2 research project.

Using cognitive interviewing to improve the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index survey instruments: Evidence from Bangladesh and Uganda

This paper describes the cognitive interviews undertaken in Bangladesh and Uganda in 2014 as part of the second round of pilots intended to refine the original version of the Women’s Empowerment in Agricultural Index (WEAI). The WEAI is a survey-based tool that assesses gendered empowerment in agriculture. Baseline data were collected in 19 countries following the WEAI’s launch in 2012, but implementers reported a number of problems, such as confusion among both respondents and enumerators regarding the meaning of abstract concepts in the autonomy sub-module and difficulties recalling the sequence and duration of activities in the time-use sub-module. In our cognitive interviews, we asked detailed follow-up questions such as, “Did you think this question was difficult, and if so, why?” and “Can you explain this term to me in your own words?” The results revealed potential problems with the survey questions and informed the revision of the WEAI, now called the Abbreviated WEAI (or A-WEAI), which has less potential for response errors.

Gender Dimensions on Farmers’ Preferences for Direct-Seeded Rice with Drum Seeder in India

This study measures the willingness of male and female farmers to pay for climate-smart technology in rice. Rice is the most important crop in India in terms of area, production, and consumption. It is also the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions among all crops. Direct-seeded rice (DSR) with drum seeder, a climate-smart technology, requires less labor and water and is more climate friendly than transplanted rice; yet, its adoption is slow in India. The authors of this study carried out a discrete choice experiment with 666 farmers from the Palghar and Thane districts of Maharashtra to measure their willingness to pay for drum seeders—a key piece of equipment for adopting DSR. Both male and female farmers were surveyed to capture the heterogeneity in their valuation of the key attributes of drum seeders. Although both male and female farmers prefer cheaper drum seeders, the marginal valuation of different attributes of the drum seeder varies by the farmers’ gender. The authors also used the Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), to collect self-reported data on the role and say of women in agriculture. The respective gender roles in the family and on the farm seem to explain some of this difference. Men have a greater say over how the family spends the cash. Accordingly, men tend to have a higher willingness to pay for attributes that increase income (increase in yield) or reduce cash costs (reduction in the seed rate). Women contribute a large share of the labor for transplanting rice, much of which is unpaid work on family farms. Not surprisingly, therefore, women seem to value labor saving significantly more than their male counterparts. Further, the WEAI data show that although men in the family have more say, women do have an influence on decisions regarding crop production and the adoption of new technologies, to an extent. Therefore, to enhance the adoption of drum seeders, the product designers and extension workers should also target women.

Empowerment and agricultural production: Evidence from rural households in Niger

Niger is a landlocked Sahelian country, two-thirds of which is in the Sahara desert, with only one-eighth of the land considered arable. Nevertheless, more than 90 percent of Niger’s labor force is employed in agriculture, which is predominantly subsistence oriented. Since the great famines of the 1970s and 1980s, the country has pursued agrarian intensification through technological change to address challenges to the food security situation. However, this approach has failed to recognize that the main characteristic of the Sahelian part of West Africa is the intricate complexity of the social, environmental, and economic dimensions that differentially affect male and female rural dwellers. One example is the patrilineal tenure system, which under increased population pressure has led to the exclusion of women and youth from agriculture in some areas. The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) indicates that access to land is one important dimension of empowerment. In order to assess the role of empowerment in agricultural production, we use new household- and individual-level WEAI data from Niger and regression analysis. Our results show that empowerment is important for agricultural production and that households in which adult individuals are more empowered are more productive. This means that other and possibly more effective pathways to agrarian intensification exist and important agricultural productivity gains could be made by empowering men and women in rural households.