UK LAUNCH OF GROUNDBREAKING INDEX DESIGNED TO EMPOWER WOMEN AND FIGHT HUNGER

Ahead of International Women’s Day on March 8^th, a significant new breakthrough in the measurement of women’s empowerment in developing countries will be launched in the UK. The “Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index” (WEAI) is the first measure to directly capture women’s empowerment and inclusion levels in the agricultural sector.

The Index will be launched at the Houses of Parliament on 7^th of March at an event co-hosted by two All Party Parliamentary Groups focused on developing countries. The Index is a partnership between Oxford University’s Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), the US Government’s Feed the Future initiative, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

Empowering women in agriculture means helping them produce food, bring their produce to market, obtain loans, access tools, tackle problems in their communities and benefit from opportunities to grow their businesses. To encourage women farmers, the index focuses on five areas: decisions over agricultural production, power over productive resources such as land and livestock, decisions over income, leadership in the community, and time use. Women are considered to be empowered if they have adequate achievements in four of the five areas. The Index also compares the empowerment of women and men from the same household, asking both genders the same survey questions.

Piloted in three countries with diverse socioeconomic and cultural contexts—Bangladesh, Guatemala, and Uganda—the Index was developed to track the change in women’s empowerment that occurs as a direct or indirect result of U.S. government interventions under its Feed the Future initiative to tackle global hunger and food security. The U.S. government will use the Index for performance monitoring and impact evaluations.

“The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index marks a major advance in our ability to measure empowerment. It brings into stark relief the ways in which women are empowered, and the areas in which they are disempowered,” said Dr. Sabina Alkire, OPHI Director and co-creator of the Alkire Foster method for measuring multidimensional poverty, which has been used to construct the index. “In giving us an improved understanding of empowerment, it enhances our ability to better empower women and improve their lives.”

“Through Feed the Future, President Obama's global hunger and food security initiative, we are fundamentally transforming our approach to agricultural development, working closely with partner governments, smallholder farmers and private sector players to make smart, cost-effective investments," said Dr. Rajiv Shah, USAID Administrator. "The Index will be used to monitor and evaluate Feed the Future programs and their impact on gender to ensure that our efforts are encouraging women and supporting the essential role they play in reducing hunger and advancing prosperity.”

Traditionally, money and education are used as indirect signposts of women’s empowerment. The new survey questions used for the WEAI expose the weaknesses in these ‘proxies’ by showing, for example, that having money or being educated does not guarantee that women are able to thrive as entrepreneurs in the field of agriculture.

“Identifying gaps in empowerment is especially useful for designing interventions that are appropriate in terms of context and culture,” said Dr. Agnes Quisumbing, IFPRI Senior Research Fellow. “Knowing these gaps, policymakers will be in a better position to design and implement interventions to close the gaps.”

The WEAI pilot results show some surprising new findings:

• In the sample from the Western Highlands of Guatemala, wealth is a poor indicator of empowerment—three-quarters of women in the wealthiest two-thirds of the population are not yet empowered.
• In the southern Bangladesh sample, more than half of women are less empowered than the men with whom they share their house, yet they are usually confident speaking in public.
• In the sample from rural parts of Uganda, lack of control over resources and time burdens contribute most to the disempowerment of women.

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This press release is reprinted by Alanna Shaikh out of an obscure sense of guilt. It does not represent the opinions of Alanna Shaikh or any of her employers.