MEASURING WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT IN AGRICULTURE

Key facts

• WEAI is the first comprehensive and standardized measure of women’s empowerment and inclusion in the agricultural sector.

• WEAI is being used in the monitoring and evaluation of USAID’s Feed the Future Initiative in 19 countries.

• As of August 2016, at least 57 external organizations had used the WEAI in 35 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) - part of the PIM portfolio and a joint effort of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), and USAID's Feed the Future Initiative - is the first comprehensive and standardized measure of women’s empowerment and inclusion in the agricultural sector.

Launched in 2012, the Index aims to increase understanding of the linkages between women’s empowerment, agricultural productivity, and food security. By doing so, it can help to diagnose empowerment gaps, identify and prioritize interventions to close these gaps, and later test the effectiveness of interventions. The tool is composed of two sub-indices: the first one measures the degree of women’s empowerment in five domains (decisions about agricultural production, access to and decision-making power over productive resources, control over use of income, leadership in the community, and time use), and the second one measures gender parity in empowerment within the household.

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Citation

IFPRI. 2016. Measuring women’s empowerment in agriculture. PIM Outcome Note. Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://ebrary.ifpri.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15738coll2/id/130729