Presentation by Elizabeth Waithanji (ILRI) at "A Learning Event for the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index," held November 21, 2013 in Washington DC.

1. An adaptation of the Women
Empowerment in Agriculture Index
from a Five to a Six domain Metric
Elizabeth Waithanji
ILRI

2. 1st Adaptation – Domains / Dimensions
Six Domain adaptation
Five Domain WEAI (Alkire et al., 2013)
DOMAIN /
DIMENSION
1
2
INDICATORS
Production
Input in productive decisions
Autonomy in production
Resources
1
Ownership of assets
Purchase, sale, or transfer of
assets
Access to and decisions on
credit
Control over use of income
2
3
4
3
Income
4
Leadership
Group membership
Speaking in public
5
5
Time
Workload
Leisure
6*
DOMAIN / INDICATORS
DIMENSION
Production Input in productive decisions
Autonomy in production
Resources
Ownership of assets
Purchase, sale, or transfer of assets
Access to and decisions on credit
Income
Control over use of income
Leadership Group membership
Speaking in public
Ownership of an identity card
Time
Workload
Leisure
Autonomy in making appropriate
Health
decisions on reproductive health
Attitudes towards gender based
violence
2

3. Reasons for 1st Adaptation
• Pilot study intending to integrate rights and
economic development interventions
• Establish a tool to measure impacts in terms
of economic development and rights
• Hypothesis to be tested by study
“Combining women’s economic opportunities and women’s
rights could have the potential to lead to broader women’s
empowerment”
3

4. Pilot study where Adapted WEAI Used
• Study called “Evaluating the Impacts of Livestock
Micro-credit and Value Chain Programs on
Women’s Empowerment”
• Project in study included
– Kenya Agriculture Research Institute (KARI) indigenous
chicken project (a baseline prior to sale of chickens to
resettled internally displaced people and indigenous
communities)
– Juhudi Kilimo an agriculture and livestock microcredit
intervention
– East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) project – a
dairy project intervention that enhances participation
of dairy farmer groups using the “hub Model”
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5. EADD Hub Model
Source EADD
FARMERS
OTHER RELATED MEs
HARDWARE SUPPLIERS
CHILLING HUB
VILLAGE BANKS
FIELD DAYS
TESTING
AI & EXTENSION
FEED SUPPLY
TRANSPORTERS
5

6. 2nd Adaptation – Cut off points for Adequacy
Five Domain WEAI (Alkire et al., 2013)
Attainment of Empowerment
When adequate in 4 out of 5
domains
The combination of weighted
indicators add up to 80% or
more
Each domain has a weight of 1/5
(one fifth)
“Joint “ (decisionmaking and
ownership) are considered to
signify adequacy
Six Domain adaptation
Attainment of Empowerment
When adequate in 4 out of 6
domains
The combination of weighted
indicators add up to 67% or
more
Each domain has a weight of 1/6
(one sixth)
“Joint “ (decisionmaking and
ownership) are considered not
to signify adequacy
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7. Reasons for 2nd Adaptation
• A sixth domain health with two indicators and
a third indicator to the leadership domain
were added and needed to be factored-in in
the calculation of the index
• Decision not to recognize “joint” ownership
and decisionmaking to signify empowerment
lowered the adequacy scores such that
everyone became inadequate if cut of were
left at 80%
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8. Results using six dimension adaptation (5
dimension values in parenthesis)
Project
Component
Indigenous
Malindi
chicken value
Naivasha
chain (KARI)
Dairy value chain Selling milk to
dairy
(EADD)
Selling milk
through other
modes
Micro-credit
Taken loans
program (Juhudi Not taken
Kilimo)
loans
6DE
GPI
WEAI (All
Women)
0.72 (0.91) 0.87 (0.97) 0.74 (0.92)
0.82 (0.95) 0.93 (0.99) 0.83 (0.95)
WEAI
(WMMM
only)
0.70 (0.90)
0.79 (0.94)
0.62 (0.90) 0.82 (0.95) 0.64 (0.91)
0.64 (0.89)
0.60 (0.87) 0.83 (0.97) 0.62 (0.89)
0.62 (0.86)
0.73 (0.93) 0.86 (0.97) 0.74 (0.94)
0.70 (0.92) 0.87 (0.96) 0.71 (0.92)
0.70 (0.92)
0.71 (0.91)
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9. Similarities and differences between
5DE WEAI and its 6DE adaptation results
• The sixth domain, health, demonstrated
magnitudes of adequacy and inadequacy like the
other domains – e.g. if (wo)men were
empowered in the health domain they were
empowered in the other domains, the converse
was true too …
• Overall, the same patterns of empowerment
emerged when both 5DE and 6DE tools were
used, but the values obtained when 5DE was
used were much higher
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10. Conclusion
• Adding a sixth domain enables researchers to measure
empowerment in terms of economic advancement and
rights
• It will be possible to establish if interventions using rights
and economic empowerment interventions have a greater
impact on empowerment than those using one or other
intervention
• 5DE WEAI has higher values than its 6DE adaptation.
Everyone appeared empowered when 5DE WEAI was used,
hence the need to adapt the tool to context
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11. Adaptation challenge
• Calculating WEAI, whether 5DE or 6DE is difficult
and complex [because it involves typing long
syntaxes] making the calculation very
“technician” dependent – gender scientist who
are mainly qualitative lose control of process
• Establishing adequacy cut off points, especially
the percentage value (80% or 67%) requires some
toggling back and forth giving it an element of
subjectivity – this has been criticized (brutally) by
mainstream economists
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