Deciphering the crux of women's empowerment in agricultural value chains – A scoping review

Abstract

This review paper highlights the essential requirement of women in agricultural practices and emphasizes gender equality and their contribution to household productivity and food security. The paper discusses the various stages of the value chain and identifies entry points for interventions aimed at enhancing women's participation and benefits and also evaluates the efforts meant to empower women within the agriculture sector, especially to determine women's involvement in the Agricultural Value Chain (AVC). Evaluation of women's empowerment using diverse approaches such as the REBT Framework, and WEAI in various countries was analyzed by using the PRISMA framework and concluded with the emerging new methodology of PRO-WEAI developed by IFPRI to focus on the empowerment of women relevant to the value chain. WEAI-type tools allow for direct comparison between men and women in the same households. This approach offers additional advantages, such as having an explicit link to empowerment theory and using both qualitative and quantitative data to develop and validate the Index. The paper concludes that the emergence of pro-WEAI offers a streamlined and improved tool for analyzing intrahousehold characteristics. It incorporates a gender parity index, enhancing the measurement process. This index is also utilized for calculating GDP per capita, providing a more accurate assessment of economic conditions. Overall, pro-WEAI's concise structure and comprehensive approach make it a superior choice for measuring women's empowerment in the agricultural sector.