Journal Articles

Adapting the Women's Empowerment in Nutrition Index: Lessons from Kenya

Women face a disproportionate burden of malnutrition and food insecurity. Research has shown that women's empowerment can buffer women against nutritional problems. This paper contributes to ongoing efforts to measure women's empowerment that are both context-sensitive and universal, focusing on the recently developed Women's Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI). Earlier research has shown it is both a valid construct and positively related to dietary and nutritional outcomes of women in South Asia. We establish that WENI is generalizable to agropastoral and pastoral Kenya, an area with substantially different livelihoods, food system, norms, and institutions than South Asia. We find that a locally contextualized WENI is strongly associated with women's body mass index and dietary diversity as well as household level food insecurity. We also present findings for two shorter variations of WENI: an abbreviated WENI (A-WENI) and a cross context WENI (CC-WENI). A-WENI contains a small subset of WENI indicators identified using machine learning with South Asian data and therefore is context-specific. CC-WENI does not contain indicators specific to the validation context. We find that they perform comparably well with caveats. Thus, as use of WENI expands we recommend adapting WENI for in-depth analyses of women's nutritional empowerment; using CC-WENI for cross-context comparisons; and using A-WENI for rapid appraisals of community level progress in a given context.

Calculating the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) using Stata

How do women’s empowerment metrics measure up? A comparative analysis

Research has identified women’s empowerment as a critical factor for nutritional outcomes and a priority area for understanding women’s mental health status. At the same time, there is no consensus on how empowerment should be measured. The surrounding debate has produced several empowerment metrics that are widely used, yet we know little about whether they can be substituted for one another or their respective strengths and weaknesses. Using data collected from a single sample of women from rural, northern Kenya, we compare five empowerment metrics: The Project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) and associated Health and Nutrition Module (HN), Women’s Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI), Women’s Empowerment in Livestock Index (WELI), and the Survey Based Women’s Empowerment Index (SWPER). The metrics have shared theoretical origins and are commonly used in the food, nutrition and health spaces to study rural women’s lives across low- and middle-income countries. We examine the metrics’ characteristics, distributions, pairwise correlations and capacity of each metric to predict outcomes often associated with the concept of empowerment: body mass index (BMI) and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). We find striking differences between these common empowerment metrics. The metrics’ correlations with one another are highly variable as are the predictive capacities for both outcomes. Further, our analysis finds that the choice of metric can dramatically influence which individuals are identified as empowered. In sum, our results suggest that while these metrics are used in remarkably similar ways to understand rural women’s empowerment and its consequences, unless they are computed with many identical survey questions, the metrics do not capture the same underlying concept and are not interchangeable. We recommend that our work be replicated elsewhere and caution should be taken when implementing and interpreting research using these metrics, as findings may be highly sensitive to the choice of metric.

Enhancing agency and empowerment in agricultural development projects: A synthesis of mixed methods impact evaluations from the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2)

Development interventions increasingly include women’s empowerment and gender equality among their objectives, but evaluating their impact has been stymied by the lack of measures that are comparable across interventions. This paper synthesizes the findings of 11 mixed-methods impact evaluations of agricultural development projects from South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa that were part of the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2).

The GAAP2 for pro-WEAI Study Team consists of the following projects and authors: Co-Principal investigators: Agnes Quisumbing, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Hazel Malapit; Index team: Malick Dione, Jessica Heckert, Hazel Malapit, Elena M. Martinez, Audrey Pereira, Greg Seymour, Chloe van Biljon, Ana Vaz; Qualitative team: Marlène Elias, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Annet Mulema, Emily Myers, Deborah Rubin; Project management: Ara Go, Federica Argento; Members are listed alphabetically by project, and alphabetically (by last name) within project: Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL): Akhter Ahmed, Anika Hannan, Shalini Roy, Masuma Younus; Bangladesh Agriculture Value Chains (AVC): Alan de Brauw, Amita Dey, Berber Kramer, Mike Murphy; Building resilience of vulnerable communities in Burkina Faso (Grameen): Benjamin Crookston, Megan Gash, Bobbi Gray; Deploying improved vegetable technologies to overcome malnutrition and poverty (WorldVeg): Marwan Benali, Pepijn Schreinemachers, Caroline Sobgui; Empowerment, Resilience, and Livestock Transfers (Heifer Project International): Sarah Janzen, Neena Joshi, Nicholas Magnan, Rajendra Pradhan, Sudhindra Sharma, Sophie Theis; Evaluation of women’s food security program for impoverished Maasai households (Maisha Bora): Marc Bellemare, Bart Casierod and Agricultural Approaches to Reducing Malnutrition (FAARM): Sabine Ga, Susan James, Brooke Krause, Mathias Lardinois, Aine McCarthy; Food and Agricultural Approaches to Reducing Malnutrition (FAARM): Sabine Gabrysch, Sheela Sinharoy, Jillian Waid, Amanda Wendt; Integrated poultry value chain and nutrition intervention (SELEVER): Josué Awonon, Rasmane Ganaba, Aulo Gelli, Elena Martinez, Abdoulaye Pedehombga, Armande Sanou , Sita Zougouri; MoreMilk: Making the most of milk: Silvia Alonso, Alessandra Galiè, Tasokwa Kakota, Jef Leroy, Giordano Palloni; Small-scale irrigation and women’s empowerment in northern Ghana (iDE): Elizabeth Bryan, Dawit Mekonnen; Targeting and Realigning Agriculture to Improve Nutrition (TRAIN): Mamun Miah, Neha Kumar, Saiqa Siraj; UN Joint Programme on accelerating progress towards the economic empowerment of rural women in Ethiopia (JP RWEE): Mihret Alemu, Brenda Boonabaana, Ana Paula de la Ocampo, Susan Kaaria, Marya Hillesland, Erdgin Mane, Vanya Slavchevska; Women Improving Nutrition through Group-based Strategies (WINGS): Avijit Choudhury, Madhu Khetan, Neha Kumar, Kalyani Raghunathan, Giang Thai.

Measuring women’s empowerment in agriculture: Innovations and evidence

This paper addresses women's empowerment in agriculture, innovations in its measurement, and emerging evidence. We discuss the evolution of the conceptualization and measurement of women's empowerment and gender equality since 2010. Using a gender and food systems framework and a standardized measure of women's empowerment, the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), we review the evidence on “what works” to empower women based on impact evaluations of a portfolio of 11 agricultural development projects with empowerment objectives and a scoping review of livestock interventions. We then review the evidence on associations between empowering women and societal benefits--agricultural productivity, incomes, and food security and nutrition. We conclude with recommendations for measurement and policy.

Assessing multicountry programs through a “Reach, Benefit, Empower, Transform” lens

Can a gender-sensitive integrated poultry value chain and nutrition intervention increase women's empowerment among the rural poor 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 (treatment on the treated). Program impacts on empowerment and gender parity were null, despite the program's multipronged and gender-sensitive approach. 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.

Development and validation of a health and nutrition module for the project-level Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI+HN)

Agricultural development projects increasingly aim to improve health and nutrition outcomes, often by engaging women. Although evidence shows such projects can improve women's and children's health and nutrition and empower women, little is known about their impacts on women's health- and nutrition-related agency and the extent to which impacts emerge through women's empowerment, largely due to a lack of instruments that measure the dimensions of women's agency that are directly relevant to health and nutrition outcomes. We developed an optional, complementary module for the project-level women's empowerment in agriculture index (pro-WEAI) to measure health- and nutrition-related agency (pro-WEAI + HN). Our method for developing related indicators used data collected from six agricultural development programmes implemented across Bangladesh, Burkina Faso and Mali (pooled sample = 12,114) and applied psychometric analysis (exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis) and the Alkire−Foster methodology. Results revealed seven indicators covering women's agency in the areas of her own health and diet; her health and diet during pregnancy; her child's diet; breastfeeding and weaning; purchasing food and health products; and acquiring food and health products. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis revealed measurement invariance across contexts and samples. Tests of association (Cramer's V) and redundancy suggest that the pro-WEAI + HN indicators measured aspects of agency that are distinct from the core pro-WEAI. The uptake of these indicators in studies of nutrition-sensitive agricultural development projects may strengthen the evidence on how such programming can enhance women's empowerment to improve health and nutrition outcomes for themselves and their children.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

What dimensions of women’s empowerment in agriculture matter for nutrition in Ghana?

Women’s empowerment mitigates the negative effects of low production diversity on maternal and child nutrition in Nepal

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

Using a nationally representative survey from Bangladesh, we examine the relationship between women’s empowerment in agriculture, measured using the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index, and per capita calorie availability, dietary diversity, and adult body mass index (BMI). Accounting for potential endogeneity of empowerment, we find that increases in women’s empowerment are positively associated with calorie availability and dietary diversity at the household level. Overall, household wealth, education, and occupation are more important than women’s empowerment as determinants of adult nutritional status, although negative impacts of group membership and credit on male BMI suggest that intrahousehold trade-offs may exist.

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index