Quisumbing, Agnes R.

Malapit, Hazel J.

Myers, Emily

Heckert, Jessica

Seymour, Greg

Doss, Cheryl

Faas, Simone

Paz, Florencia

Yount, Kathryn M.

Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S.

Sinharoy, Sheela S.

Cheong, Yuk Fai

Hassan, Md. Zahidul

Hassan, Md. Imrul

Sharma, Sudhindra

Pokhrel, Pankaj

Sagastume, Mónica Dardón

Kanyanda, Shelton S. E.

Vundru, Wilbert D.

Moylan, Heather

Monitoring progress toward Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5—achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls—remains challenging unless we incorporate women’s empowerment metrics into nationally representative and multi-topic surveys. To address this data gap, we designed the Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS) as a streamlined empowerment module suitable for the 50x2030 Initiative, a global partnership that aims to build capacity and close the agricultural data gap in 50 countries by 2030, as well as other large multi-topic surveys. WEMNS measures women’s and men’s empowerment and is applicable to urban and rural areas and a variety of livelihood strategies (farming, self-employment, wage labor) across countries in different stages of structural transformation. WEMNS is a counting-based, multidimensional index composed of four domains: intrinsic agency, instrumental agency, collective agency, and agency-enabling resources. Each domain is measured with binary indicators derived from question sets in the WEMNS module. In this paper, we describe the development and testing of WEMNS and its components, including: (1) WEMNS's distinctiveness from other empowerment metrics; (2) the iterative approach used to develop and pilot the WEMNS module in Bangladesh, Guatemala, Malawi, and Nepal, using cognitive interviewing, phone surveys, and face-to-face surveys; (3) analysis of quantitative pilot data; and (4) a summary of the findings from the cognitive interviewing. The paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned and possibilities for further development of WEMNS and other empowerment metrics.

Measuring women's empowerment in national surveys: Development of the Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS)

Meinzen-Dick, Ruth Suseela

Quisumbing, Agnes

Gerli, Beatrice

McCarron, Catherine

This paper compares the empowerment impacts of the UN Joint Program for Rural Women’s Economic Empowerment (JP RWEE) in Ethiopia, Niger, Nepal, and Kyrgyzstan using the Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI). We assess the extent of empowerment and gender parity, and decompose the sources of disempowerment, separately for men and women and for beneficiary and control groups. We then estimate program impacts on A-WEAI and its component indicators and assess whether estimated impacts are consistent with the activities implemented by the program. We interpret the quantitative results in the light of the qualitative studies undertaken as part of the impact evaluation. Despite the diversity in country and cultural contexts, in all four countries, women are more disempowered than men, although large proportions of men are themselves disempowered. Excessive workload is the most common major contributor to disempowerment, and so is lack of group membership. The program had positive impacts on aggregate empowerment measures for program participants in Niger, Nepal, and Kyrgyzstan. Nevertheless, gender parity improved only in Nepal. The group-based approach was a clear contributor to women’s empowerment in Ethiopia, Nepal, and Kyrgyzstan. In Kyrgyzstan, the GALS/BALI approach contributed to impacts across almost all indicators of empowerment. The positive impact of GALS and GALS/BALI on men and women alike in Kyrgyzstan is consistent with emerging evidence that involving both men and women in gender transformative approaches, rather than focusing on women alone, may be key to effective and sustainable programs. Although impacts on time use were insignificant in the quantitative study, the qualitative work pointed out negative impacts, emphasizing the unintended consequences of increased workload for women who participate in livelihood interventions.

Does the UN Joint Program for Rural Women’s Economic Empowerment (JP RWEE) deliver on its empowerment objectives?

Paz, Florencia

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