Not sure which WEAI is right for you? Click here for an interactive tool that will guide you through the selection process.
The project-level WEAI (pro-WEAI) measures women’s empowerment in various types of agricultural development projects. This version uses the A-WEAI as a starting point and adds specialized project-relevant modules, designed and tested by the WEAI team, as well as a market inclusion module and an add-on module specific to nutrition and health projects. Standardized components of the survey will be comparable across all projects using the pro-WEAI, and specialized project-relevant modules will be comparable within clusters of projects addressing similar pathways to empowerment in the agricultural sector. Additionally, pro-WEAI includes qualitative protocols to add nuance to the quantitative results. The pro-WEAI is not directly comparable to the original Feed the Future WEAI baselines.
Pro-WEAI is made up of 10 indicators (and 2 optional indicators) that measure three types of agency: intrinsic agency (power within), instrumental agency (power to), and collective agency (power with).
The indicators are grouped by type of agency as follows:
- Intrinsic agency
- Autonomy in income
- Self-efficacy
- Attitudes about intimate partner violence against women
- Respect among household members (optional)
- Instrumental agency
- Input in productive decisions
- Ownership of land and other assets
- Access to and decisions on financial services
- Control over use of income
- Work balance
- Visiting important locations
- Collective agency
- Group membership
- Membership in influential groups (optional)
Pro-WEAI has been tested and developed by 13 agricultural development projects in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Mali, Nepal, and Tanzania as part of the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2). Click here for all GAAP2/pro-WEAI publications.
Using the pro-WEAI for impact evaluations:
In order to create a treatment and control group which can be compared with confidence, your study needs to either: 1) be designed as an impact evaluation or 2) use statistical techniques to calculate comparable groups. There are many easily accessible resources on how to conduct an impact evaluation, such as the Food Security Portal course. We recommend standard practices for impact evaluations be followed in order to measure how your project impacted the empowerment of men and women using the pro-WEAI.