Women’s Empowerment In Agriculture Index Research Articles

Insights of women’s empowerment and decision-making in rice production in Malaysia

Women's empowerment is essential in achieving global food security while being prioritised as one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda. Even though a women’s empowerment role in agriculture received wide attention in works of literature, there is still a research gap about women’s empowerment in Malaysia's agriculture. This study contributes to the status of women’s empowerment and its determinants, as well as challenges to enhance women’s empowerment among rice smallholders in Selangor, Malaysia. By using a framework adapted from the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), 200 smallholder paddy farmers were selected using stratified random sampling. The results revealed vital domains that contributed to women’s empowerment, which provided access to extension services and led to effective decision-making, whereas leadership displayed a negative association. The lack of participation in the planning process and community groups were significant obstacles in enhancing the women's empowerment among rice farmers. These results suggested the scope of possible interventions and policy recommendations to enhance women’s empowerment in agriculture.

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.

The role of women empowerment and labour dependency on adoption of integrated soil fertility management in Malawi

AbstractThis paper explores the role of women empowerment and labour on enabling farmers to cross two hurdles: adopt and intensify soil fertility management (SFM), coming after six decades of SFM research that disseminated several technologies. Despite the assertion that productivity gains cannot be realized unless drivers of soil degradation are addressed, SFM usage is low. We collected data from a systematically drawn random sample of 238 farmers, representing 30% of farming households in five villages in Malawi's Rift Valley escarpments and analysed using a double‐hurdle model. Descriptive results show that 90% of the respondents used inorganic fertilizers, 72% planted legumes and 57% applied organic manure. The empirical analysis shows that one percentage point increase in dependency ratio reduces probability to apply organic amendments by 0.4 percentage points and erodes the positive influence of increasing labour on application of inorganic fertilizer. As women become increasingly empowered in decision‐making, there are significant trade‐offs: a percentage point increase in women empowerment in agriculture index (WEAI) potentially leads to a one‐third percentage point increase in the area allocated to legumes but reduces the amount of organic manure applied with higher elasticity of two percentage points. Considering the trade‐offs, sustainable intensification could be achieved by harnessing the positive influences while concurrently reducing the negative ones over a decision space. Notably, addressing the negative effect associated with women empowerment on manuring could unlock potentials for integrated SFM as women are already engaged in legume cropping.

Measuring Time Use in Developing Country Agriculture: Evidence from Bangladesh and Uganda

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the challenges associated with implementing time-use surveys among agricultural households in developing countries and offers advice on best practices for two common measurement methods: stylized questions and time diaries. Using data from Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) surveys in Bangladesh and Uganda, it finds that stylized questions do not always produce shorter interviews compared to time diaries, and recall accuracy may depend on the regularity and saliency of the activity and enumerator abilities. The paper suggests that combining promising methodological innovations from other disciplines with mainstream time-use data collection methods would allow capture of both the quantity and quality of time and provide richer insights into gendered time-use patterns. Broadening the scope of time-use research to other aspects of well-being can help identify how time constraints contribute to gender inequality and inform the design of policies and interventions to relieve those constraints. HIGHLIGHTS Time-use surveys are essential for addressing gender disparities, yet little research has compared time-use survey methods in developing countries. Developing country agricultural contexts present unique logistical challenges to time-data collection, including low literacy and unfamiliarity with clock-oriented time. In Bangladesh and Uganda, there are systematic differences between time-use estimates obtained using stylized questions and time diaries. Men and women experience different emotions toward different types of work, and gender gaps exist in the distribution of pleasant and unpleasant activities. Learning from non-economics disciplines, including research on quality of time, leads to richer insights into gendered time-use patterns.

Evolution of a gender tool: WEAI, WELI and livestock research

The Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) has been in use since 2012 and is widely recognized as one of the most rigorous tools to measure women's empowerment as a direct or indirect result of interventions from development projects. Changes to the WEAI have been ongoing and recent adaptations include measuring effects of interventions to improve livestock value chains on women's empowerment, as well as livestock related research. A multidisciplinary team of researchers at ILRI and Emory University developed the Women's Empowerment in Livestock Index (WELI), a new index to assess the empowerment of women in the livestock sector. While the WELI has been piloted in both Honduras and Tanzania, this article provides details on the latter case only. Currently, the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Livestock Systems has employed the Abbreviated-Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI) to examine female decision-making in various projects from animal care knowledge and practices to feeding practices for children. Additionally, the development of the Project-Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index, currently in pilot testing, may allow for more insight into scaling existing projects. This article will discuss the adaptation and use of the WEAI for livestock research in Tanzania and Uganda, as well as future uses for contextually measuring women livestock producers' empowerment.

Women’s empowerment and nutrition status: The case of iron deficiency in India

In this paper we study the relationship between women’s empowerment in agriculture and their iron deficiency status in Maharashtra, India. This is the first time the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) has been used in association with explicit measurement of medical biomarkers for women’s iron deficiency status. Using primary data for 960 women we find that the log odds of a poor iron status in women decline as women’s empowerment levels in agriculture improve. Further, this decline is seen in the presence of multiple dietary diversity measures (dietary diversity score, share of rice and wheat in the diet, total iron intake and iron intake from iron-rich food groups – all for 24-h and 30-day recalls) suggesting that in addition to dietary pathways women’s empowerment can play a role in addressing micronutrient deficiencies like those of iron in a vulnerable sub-group of the population. It also reinforces the need to move away from the ‘staple grain fundamentalism’ that has characterized agricultural policy in India, towards more nutrition-sensitive food systems.

Adapting the Women's empowerment in agriculture index to specific country context: Insights and critiques from fieldwork in India

The Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) is a direct, multi-dimensional measure of women's access to resources and decision-making in various domains of agriculture. However, several challenges characterize its use: adaptation of questionnaires to local agricultural contexts, modifications to index construction once underlying activities and adequacy thresholds are modified, and sensitivity analysis. In this paper, we address such challenges based on our experience of adapting and using the WEAI across 3600 households in India. In doing so we contribute to the methodological and technical base underlying the index, expand the WEAI evidence base for South Asia, and highlight the importance of tailoring the index to specific agricultural contexts in order to impact public policies in a meaningful way.

Heterogeneity in male and female farmers’ preference for a profit‐enhancing and labor‐saving technology: The case of Direct‐Seeded Rice (DSR) in India

AbstractLabor‐saving and income‐increasing technologies may affect women farmers differently from men. However, very few studies explicitly account for women's preferences for new technologies. We carried out a discrete choice experiment with 337 female and 329 male farmers in Maharashtra, India, to measure their willingness to pay (WTP) for direct‐seeded rice (DSR) with drum seeder and to understand the gender differences in marginal valuations of key attributes. We used the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) to collect self‐reported data on the role and say of women in different domains of decision making. The respective gender roles of women and men in the family and on the farm are aligned with their preferences. Men have a greater say over how the family spends the cash. Accordingly, men tend to have a higher WTP for attributes that increase income (increase in yield) or reduce cash costs (reduction in seed rate). Women contribute a large share of the labor for transplanting rice, much of which is unpaid work on family farms. Women, therefore, seem to value labor saving more. Women in our sample were more interested in the new technology and had a higher WTP for it.

Rural women’s empowerment and children’s food and nutrition security in Bangladesh

Abstract Women’s empowerment and child stunting remain key development challenges in Bangladesh. The objective of this study is to analyse the influence of female empowerment in agriculture, on child food security. This study uses household survey data from two waves of the Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey (BIHS), a rich panel dataset of over 6500 households in rural Bangladesh which includes detailed child anthropometric measurements of children under five years old. We adopt a multidimensional approach to female empowerment by analysing five key empowerment indicators from the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI). The multivariate regression analysis explores the relationship between five key empowerment indicators and child stunting, a proxy for child food security. Our empirical analysis finds that women’s autonomy in household productive decisions and confidence in public speaking are associated with significantly higher children’s height-for-age z-scores (haz) and a decreased probability of stunting in this sample. These results suggest expanding women’s empowerment is likely to complement nutritional interventions to reduce stunting in Bangladesh, while making progress towards other social and development goals.

The Impact of Savings Groups on Female Agency: Insights from Village Savings and Loans Associations in Northern Ghana

In this paper we examined how participation in savings groups like the Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) influence women’s agency in rural Ghana, i.e. their ability to freely participate in group activities and act on other issues and matters that affect them. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from VSLA and nonVSLA members to compare the effect between participants and nonparticipants. We used three dimensions of agency adapted from the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) to assess female agency: women’s participation and decision making in groups; women’s comfort with public speaking; and women’s decision making in their households. A significant finding of this study is that VSLA membership has enhanced the agency of female participants as they are more economically and socially active and can act on their own compared to women who did not use the savings group.

Development of the project-level Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI).

With growing commitment to women's empowerment by agricultural development agencies, sound methods and indicators to measure women's empowerment are needed to learn which types of projects or project-implementation strategies do and do not work to empower women. The Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), which has been widely used, requires adaptation to meet the need for monitoring projects and assessing their impacts. In this paper, the authors describe the adaptation and validation of a project-level WEAI (or pro-WEAI) that agricultural development projects can use to identify key areas of women's (and men's) disempowerment, design appropriate strategies to address identified deficiencies, and monitor project outcomes related to women's empowerment. The 12 pro-WEAI indicators are mapped to three domains: intrinsic agency (power within), instrumental agency (power to), and collective agency (power with). A gender parity index compares the empowerment scores of men and women in the same household. The authors describe the development of pro-WEAI, including: (1) pro-WEAI's distinctiveness from other versions of the WEAI; (2) the process of piloting pro-WEAI in 13 agricultural development projects during the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, phase 2 (GAAP2); (3) analysis of quantitative data from the GAAP2 projects, including intrahousehold patterns of empowerment/disempowerment; and (4) a summary of the findings from the qualitative work exploring concepts of women's empowerment in the project sites. The paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned from pro-WEAI and possibilities for further development of empowerment metrics.

Women's empowerment: the case of smallholder rice farmers in Kilombero District, Tanzania

ABSTRACTThis study examines women’s empowerment and its determinants for smallholder rice farming households in Kilombero, Tanzania. The Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) is adopted and for the study site, the overall WEAI was 0.54 with a 5 Domains Empowerment sub-index value of 0.50 and the Gender Parity sub-index of 0.86. Key domains contributing to women’s disempowerment are workload, resource ownership and restricted inputs to productive decision making. To assess determinants of women’s empowerment the ordinal logit analysis is used and for the female-headed households, age of the household head, education level, group membership, condition of dwelling and distance from the nearest major town have a positive association with women’s empowerment, while monthly income has a negative association with it. For the male-headed households, the association is significant for age of the man.

Socio-Economic Empowerment of Women through Women Dairy Co-operatives: A Study of Begusarai District of Bihar

The present study intends to establish the role of women dairy co-operative societies in socio-economic empowerment of women dairy farmers. For this purpose, the concept of Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index developed by feed the future was used. The index includes 5 Domains of Empowerment (5DE) and Gender Parity Index (GPI). Percentage of women dairy farmers disempowered across the five domains is less for the non-members when compared to the members. Also, disempowerment decreases as the herd size increases. The non-member group had a higher intensity of disempowerment when compared with that of the member group across the different herd size categories. In 25.32 per cent of member households, women had gender parity with their male counterparts while the same was 22.50 per cent in the case of non-members. Although gender parity was higher for women members still the figures were very meagre. The average empowerment gap between men and women of gender parity inadequate households were found to be more for non-member group (41.55 per cent) than member group (27.09 per cent). The Women's Empowerment Index, which indicated the empowerment achieved due to membership in WDCSs, was found to be more for members than that of non-members indicating a positive impact of Women Dairy Co-operative Societies in making the women empowered.

The Women\u2019s Empowerment in Livestock Index

The empowerment of women in the livestock sector is fundamental to achieve gender equality. It also is instrumental for increased household productivity and improved household health and nutrition. Diverse strategies exist to empower women, yet these strategies are difficult to prioritize without a reliable and adapted means to measure women’s empowerment. One quantitative measure is the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI). Despite its reliability in certain agricultural contexts, the WEAI requires adaptation in settings where livestock farming is the dominant form of livelihood. Using the WEAI as a starting point, a multidisciplinary team of researchers developed the Women’s Empowerment in Livestock Index (WELI), a new index to assess the empowerment of women in the livestock sector. This paper presents the WELI and the dimensions of empowerment it includes: (1) decisions about agricultural production; (2) decisions related to nutrition; (3) access to and control over resources; (4) control and use of income; (5) access to and control of opportunities; and (6) workload and control over own time. The paper illustrates the use of the WELI by introducing pilot findings from dairy smallholders in four districts of northern Tanzania. The paper addresses considerations for the appropriate use and adaptation of the WELI to balance the needs for context specificity and cross-cultural comparisons; it also discusses its limitations. The paper recommends participatory and qualitative methods that are complementary to the WELI to provide context-specific insights on the processes of women’s empowerment in the livestock sector.

Power as agency: A critical reflection on the measurement of women’s empowerment in the development sector

Despite extensive literature on the complex nature of empowerment, current efforts to measure women’s empowerment in the agricultural development sector are largely limited to assessing visible forms of agency. We take a critical look at current efforts to measure women’s empowerment at the individual/household level through standardized tools. We examine the results of a household survey conducted in Nepal using the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), which was developed as a monitoring and evaluation tool for the Feed the Future Initiative. Our interpretation of the results is informed by qualitative fieldwork conducted in the same region. In our quantitative analysis, we regress correlates of empowerment identified in the literature, such as age, education, household wealth, income, and household composition, on individual empowerment as measured by the WEAI. While several factors associated with women’s empowerment are significantly associated, household composition and intra-household relationships, which we expected to be essential factors in the local context, appear to be unrelated to the WEAI empowerment score. A measure of critical consciousness tested alongside the WEAI instrument appears instead to be closely associated with these factors. Our qualitative findings reveal that there is a discrepancy between local meanings of empowerment and definitions of empowerment defined in terms of agency. Based on these results, we suggest that improvements in measurement may be possible if approaches that measure power predominantly in terms of agency or decision-making were to include critical consciousness in their framework.

Women’s empowerment and gender equity in agriculture: A different perspective from Southeast Asia

Women’s empowerment is considered a ‘prerequisite’ to achieving global food security. Gender systems, however, are diverse and complex. The nature and extent of gender inequity and the conditions necessary to empower women vary across countries, communities and regions. The study of different gender systems is thus fundamental to capture cross-cultural variations in gender specific needs and constraints to effectively address gender gaps. Although the status of women in agriculture has received extensive attention in the literature in recent decades, a research gap persists regarding the state of gender inequity in Southeast Asian agriculture. The current paper contributes to the geographical scope of the literature by presenting empirical evidence of gender inequity from four Southeast Asian countries: Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. Using the framework recommended by the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), 37 focus group discussions were conducted with 290 women farmers in the above mentioned countries. The results reveal trends that contradict the conventional narratives of gender inequity in agriculture in certain domains of empowerment. In all four countries, women appear to have equal access to productive resources such as land and inputs, and greater control over household income than men. Important intra-regional heterogeneity is observed in terms of community-level empowerment. While women play an active role in agricultural groups in Thailand and in the Philippines, this is predominantly men’s territory in Indonesia and Myanmar. These findings imply that country-specific gender intervention frameworks are necessary to overcome gender gaps in agriculture.

Content Validity of the Abbreviated Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A‐WEAI) in Ethiopia: A Mixed Methods Approach

The conceptual pathway between agriculture and nutrition through the vehicle of women's empowerment has garnered much attention as a means to reducing global malnutrition. Until recently, understanding this complex pathway was particularly challenging given that there was no widely accepted approach to measuring women's empowerment. In 2012, Feed the Future launched the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), which measures the empowerment, inclusion and agency of women within the agricultural sector. This research study assessed the internal validity of the Abbreviated Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A‐WEAI), a second iteration of the WEAI, within the context of Ethiopian smallholder farming households. Through three phases of data collection, this study identified salient aspects of Ethiopian culture and social gender norms that influence the reliability and internal validity of the A‐WEAI as an indicator of Ethiopian women's empowerment. The first phase entailed 24 focus groups, which collected qualitative data on Ethiopian agricultural households' gender norms and understanding of the term ‘women's empowerment’. Within the second phase, 300 households responded to the quantitative A‐WEAI survey. These results were used to test content validity through principal component analysis and internal reliability through Cronbach's alpha. The last phase of data collection further assessed content validity through an expert panel survey that was used to construct a Content Validity Index (CVI). Results indicate that there are distinct Ethiopian gender norms in relation to agricultural engagement. Women most commonly defined ‘empowerment’ to mean ‘decision‐making’ and cited relationships to others (spouses, children, extended family, etc) as a strong influence on perceived levels of empowerment. To the best of our knowledge, neither the WEAI nor A‐WEAI has been assessed for content validity in any setting. Results from this study hold great significance as they contribute to understanding, for the first time, the content validity of the scale in general. This study also provides insights into the A‐WEAI's functioning in Ethiopia. Future research is needed to identify specific appropriate changes to the A‐WEAI such that women's empowerment is measured in an accurate, valid (both internally and externally) and reliable manner and thus useful in guiding policy.Support or Funding InformationThis research work was made possible by the support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under Agreement No. AID‐663‐A‐11‐000‐17. The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of the researcher & do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.

Assessing the cognitive validity of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index instrument in the Haiti Multi-Sectoral Baseline Survey

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) measures the empowerment, agency, and inclusion of women in the agriculture sector, where they contribute to more than 50% of the world’s total food production (FAO 1996). The index will be used for performance monitoring and impact evaluations of USAID’s Feed the Future (FTF) program, an investment of USD$3.5 billion in global food security. This multidimensional indicator, which encompasses measures of the roles and extent of women’s engagement in the agriculture sector in five domains, is an innovation in the field. As such, lessons are still being learned regarding collection of the data needed to inform the indicator. Our study evaluates the cognitive validity of questions used in the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) using cognitive interview data collected during the fielding of the 2012 Haiti Multi-Sectoral Baseline Survey. Our findings indicate that overall, the questions on the WEAI were generally well-understood. However, our analysis of data from the cognitive assessment allowed us to discern areas of particular concern in terms of the ability of the WEAI questions to elicit valid responses from survey participants. Specific approaches to addressing difficulties include avoiding the use of jargon and overly formal language, standardizing questions, and incorporating cognitive testing to ensure a valid and locally relevant instrument. Our analyses contribute to the enhancement of this very important measure.

Women's empowerment in agriculture and child nutritional status in rural Nepal.

To examine the association between women's empowerment in agriculture and nutritional status among children under 2 years of age in rural Nepal. Cross-sectional survey of 4080 households conducted in 2012. Data collected included: child and maternal anthropometric measurements; child age and sex; maternal age, education, occupation and empowerment in agriculture; and household size, number of children, religion, caste and agro-ecological zone. Associations between the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI)'s Five Domains of Empowerment (5DE) sub-index and its ten component indicators and child length-for-age Z-scores (LAZ) and weight-for-length Z-scores (WLZ) were estimated, using ordinary least-squares regression models, with and without adjustments for key child, maternal and household level covariates. Two hundred and forty rural communities across sixteen districts of Nepal. Children under 24 months of age and their mothers (n 1787). The overall WEAI 5DE was positively associated with LAZ (β=0·20, P=0·04). Three component indicators were also positively associated with LAZ: satisfaction with leisure time (β=0·27, P<0·01), access to and decisions regarding credit (β=0·20, P=0·02) and autonomy in production (β=0·10, P=0·04). No indicator of women's empowerment in agriculture was associated with WLZ. Women's empowerment in agriculture, as measured by the WEAI 5DE and three of its ten component indicators, was significantly associated with LAZ, highlighting the potential role of women's empowerment in improving child nutrition in Nepal. Additional studies are needed to determine whether interventions to improve women's empowerment will improve child nutrition.

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) measures the empowerment, agency, and inclusion of women in the agricultural sector and comprises two subindexes. The first assesses empowerment of women in five domains, including (1) decisions about agricultural production, (2) access to and decisionmaking power about productive resources, (3) control of use of income, (4) leadership in the community, and (5) time allocation. The second subindex measures the percentage of women whose achievements are at least as high as men in their households and, for women lacking parity, the relative empowerment gap with respect to the male in their household. This article documents the development of the WEAI and presents pilot findings from Bangladesh, Guatemala, and Uganda.