A successful outcome from IFPRI’s gender research is the WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT IN AGRICULTURE INDEX (WEAI), which is the first comprehensive and standardized measure that directly captures women’s empowerment and inclusion in the agriculture sector. Developed by IFPRI with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and the US Agency for International Development for the US Feed the Future Initiative, WEAI is being used by more than 50 organizations in 40 countries to help researchers and policy makers identify and evaluate the types of strategies or projects that empower women.
IFPRI is now working with 13 agricultural development projects to devise a project-level WEAI that is better suited to evaluating the impact of projects on women’s empowerment, and has developed the Reach, Benefit, and Empower framework for analyzing how programs and policies can affect women. Reach implies that women are involved in program activities; benefit looks at increases in their well-being; and empower requires that interventions strengthen women’s ability to make and implement strategic life choices. Policies to improve the impact of projects could include (1) improving women’s access to infrastructure and information (reach), (2) removing gender-based discrimination and access to public services (benefit), and (3) improving gender equality, for example through property rights and marriage laws (empower). Find out more at http://gaap.ifpri.info and http://weai.ifpri.info.
Another successful outcome from one of IFPRI’s gender research is the Farm and Family Balance Project to Increase Gender Equality to Improve Cash Cropping in Uganda, which seeks to increase women’s participation in the sugarcane value chain by encouraging a sugarcane processing company to register contracts for women. The share of contracts registered for women rose from 18 to 30 percent, and the company gained experience working with women. As a result, the company altered its procedures to facilitate contract registration for women. The partnering bank began making home visits, allowing more women to register for bank accounts needed to meet company requirements, and the number of women account-holders rose by 66 percent. Ongoing field work will assess the impacts of these contracts on women and households.
