Report

Women's Empowerment in Agricultural Governance (WEAGov) technical workshop: India pilot study

Gender Equality research initiative
Gender Equality (HER+) is a One CGIAR Research Initiative seeking to address the following four dimensions of gender inequality in agrifood systems:
o Women’s lack of agency or limited ability to define and act on goals, make decisions that matter to them,
and participate in the economy and in public life;
o Women’s lack of access to and control over resources;
o Social norms that discriminate based on gender; and
o Policies and governance that fail to include and benefit women.

HER+ uses impactful gender research to address the four dimensions of gender inequality by applying gender-transformative approaches to address harmful norms. It does this by bundling innovations for women’s empowerment, leveraging social protection to increase women’s access to and control over resources, and promoting inclusive governance and policies for increased resilience. HER+ will generate learning and evidence on levers and entry points to disrupt the foundations of inequality in agrifood systems (AFS).

2022 IFPRI annual report

IFPRI’s 2022 Annual Report presents highlights from our research work in low- and middle-income countries and on global challenges. In 2022, IFPRI provided critical analysis on the food systems impact of the Russia-Ukraine war and related food, fertilizer, and fuel price crisis, as well as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Work in our strategic research areas—climate resilience and sustainability, healthy diets and nutrition, inclusive and efficient food systems, institutions and governance, and rural transformation, as well as cross-cutting work on gender—continued to inform policies and programs to end hunger and malnutrition sustainably at both national and global levels.

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.

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.

Mapping the linkages between agriculture, food security and nutrition in Malawi

Smallholder agriculture is the mainstay of Malawi’s economy. Its importance for livelihoods cannot be overstated. 94 percent of rural residents and 38 percent of urban residents engage in agriculture to some extent (Jones, Shrinivas, and Bezner-Kerr 2014), the vast majority as smallholder farmers with landholdings of less than one hectare. Smallholder crops are primarily maize—which accounted for nearly 80 percent of smallholder-cultivated land in 2011 —followed by cassava and other food crops (FAO 2008; IFAD 2011). These foods are grown for household consumption and for sale at local and regional markets. As such, the Malawian food supply, especially in rural areas where markets are thin with few buying or selling options, is shaped largely by trends in smallholder food-crop production

Measuring progress toward empowerment: Women's empowerment in agriculture index: Baseline report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) baseline survey results, summarizing both findings from the WEAI survey and the relationships between the WEAI and various outcomes of interest to the US Government’s Feed the Future initiative. These poverty, health, and nutrition outcomes include both factors that might affect empowerment and outcomes that might result from empowerment. The analysis includes thirteen countries from five regions and compares their baseline survey scores. WEAI scores range from a high of 0.98 in Cambodia to a low of 0.66 in Bangladesh.

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI): Results from the 2011-2012 Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) is a new survey-based index designed to measure the empowerment, agency, and inclusion of women in the agricultural sector in an effort to identify ways to overcome those obstacles and constraints (Alkire et al. 2012). This technical report, prepared by researchers from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), presents the WEAI, computed for the Feed the Future zone as well as rural Bangladesh as a whole.