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The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI)
Hazel Malapit
Research Coordinator, IFPRI-A4NH
A4NH Gender-Nutrition Methods Workshop II
December 2-4, 2014 – Bioversity International – Rome, Italy
What’s new about the WEAI?
• New survey-based index designed by USAID, IFPRI & OPHI as a M&E tool for the US Government’s Feed the Future (FTF) Initiative
• Not based on secondary data or aggregate stats
• Men and women from the same household are interviewed
• Focus on men’s and women’s empowerment in agriculture
• Decomposable by domain/indicator, region, etc
How is the Index constructed?
Five domains of
empowerment (5DE)
A direct measure of women’s
empowerment in 5 dimensions
Gender parity Index (GPI)
Women’s achievement’s relative to the
primary male in hh
Women’s
Empowerment
in Agriculture
Index
(WEAI)
WEAI is made up of two sub indices
All range from zero to one; higher values = greater empowerment
Who is empowered?
A woman who has achieved ‘adequacy’ in 80% or more of the weighted indicators is empowered
Limitations
• Women engaged in non-agriculture decisions only may appear disempowered
• Female-only HHs more likely to appear empowered because of focus on decisionmaking questions
• Focus on agriculture may not capture other domains of empowerment that may be more relevant to specific desired outcomes
• Nuances behind domains not fully captured
How is the WEAI being used?
1. As a monitoring indicator for FTF to evaluate whether programs are having intended effect on women's empowerment
2. As a diagnostic tool to help identify areas in which women and men are disempowered, so that programs and policies can be targeted to those areas
3. Conducting more research: testing new indicators/assessing validity in different contexts, etc.
Baseline Findings
• Global report released last May 2014 with findings from 13 of the 19 countries, as well as cross-country comparisons
• Suggestive evidence that women’s empowerment is strongly correlated with several outcomes (EBF, MAD), but not with others (WDDS, children’s nutritional status)
What gets measured, gets done!
• USAID-Bangladesh responded to WEAI baseline findings by:– Retrofitting existing programs– Encouraging partners to take up activities focused on
promoting women’s empowerment in the FTF zone– Funding US$6 million worth of new programs that aim
to improve women’s empowerment in the 5 domains
• IFPRI working with the Bangladesh government Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) to orient agriculture toward nutrition and women’s empowerment (RCT to test alternative approaches)
Using the WEAI for analysis in
different socio-cultural contexts: Ghana, Bangladesh and Nepal
Hazel Malapit and Agnes Quisumbing
Poverty, Health and Nutrition DivisionInternational Food Policy Research Institute
Supported by the US Agency for International Development through the Bangladesh Policy Research and Strategy Support Program and the WEAI
Main messages (spoiler alert!)
• Patterns of (dis)empowerment vary across country and context
• Indicators and policy instruments will therefore vary
• Domains of empowerment are not equally important in determining different outcomes at the household, mother, and child level
“…the Swiss army knife by itself is a very blunt instrument if you don’t open it up. Try opening a bottle of wine with an unopened Swiss army knife – failure!”
Agnes Quisumbing speaking at the WEAI Learning Event, November 21, 2013
The WEAI as an analytical tool
What’s next for WEAI?
• Piloted new questions based on lessons learned from baseline surveys to improve
• Many organizations have adopted and modified the WEAI for their own use– Modifications are ad hoc, not coordinated– Cannot make comparisons across different types of projects
with different objectives and approaches, so difficult to know “what works”
• Develop a project-level WEAI as part of 2nd phase of Gender, Agriculture and Assets Project (GAAP2) – Refined, tested and minimal set of core indicators – Flexibility to add-on modules relevant for particular project
types (eg, crops, livestock) and dimensions of empowerment relevant to health and nutrition outcomes
Any questions? Contact Hazel Malapit: [email protected]
FOR MORE INFORMATION
• Alkire, S., Meinzen-Dick, R., Peterman, A., Quisumbing, A. R., Seymour, G. and A. Vaz. 2012. The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index. World Development52: 71-91.
• WEAI Resource Center: http://www.ifpri.org/book-9075/ourwork/program/weai-resource-center