Training Session 3: Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) Hazel Malapit Intro to the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI)

1. The Women’s Empowerment in
Agriculture Index (WEAI)
Hazel Malapit
Research Coordinator, IFPRI-A4NH
A4NH Gender-Nutrition Methods Workshop II
December 2-4, 2014 – Bioversity International – Rome, Italy

2. What’s new about the WEAI?
• New survey-based index designed by USAID,
IFPRI & OPHI as a M&E tool for the US
Government’s Feed the Future (FTF) Initiative
• Not based on secondary data or aggregate stats
• Men and women from the same household are
interviewed
• Focus on men’s and women’s empowerment in
agriculture
• Decomposable by domain/indicator, region, etc

3. How is the Index constructed?
WEAI is made up of two sub indices
Five domains
of
empowerment
(5DE)
A direct measure of
women’s
empowerment in 5
dimensions
Gender parity
Index (GPI)
Women’s
achievement’s
relative to the
primary male in hh
Women’s
Empowerment
in Agriculture
Index
(WEAI)
All range from zero to one;
higher values = greater empowerment

4. A woman’s empowerment score shows her own
achievements
Five domains of empowerment

5. Who is empowered?
A woman who has achieved
‘adequacy’ in 80% or more of the
weighted indicators
is empowered

6. Q: Is Lilian Empowered/Disempowered?

7. A: Lilian is Empowered

8. Q: Is Seema Empowered/Disempowered?

9. A: Seema is Disempowered

10. Limitations
• Women engaged in non-agriculture decisions
only may appear disempowered
• Female-only HHs more likely to appear
empowered because of focus on
decisionmaking questions
• Focus on agriculture may not capture other
domains of empowerment that may be more
relevant to specific desired outcomes
• Nuances behind domains not fully captured

11. How is the WEAI being used?
1. As a monitoring indicator for FTF to evaluate
whether programs are having intended effect on
women's empowerment
2. As a diagnostic tool to help identify areas in
which women and men are disempowered, so
that programs and policies can be targeted to
those areas
3. Conducting more research: testing new
indicators/assessing validity in different
contexts, etc.

12. Baseline Findings
• Global report released last
May 2014 with findings from
13 of the 19 countries, as well
as cross-country comparisons
• Suggestive evidence that
women’s empowerment is
strongly correlated with
several outcomes (EBF, MAD),
but not with others (WDDS,
children’s nutritional status)

13. Bangladesh
% Contribution of domains & indicators to women’s disempowerment

14. What gets measured, gets done!
• USAID-Bangladesh responded to WEAI baseline
findings by:
– Retrofitting existing programs
– Encouraging partners to take up activities focused on
promoting women’s empowerment in the FTF zone
– Funding US$6 million worth of new programs that aim
to improve women’s empowerment in the 5 domains
• IFPRI working with the Bangladesh government
Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) to orient agriculture
toward nutrition and women’s empowerment
(RCT to test alternative approaches)

15. Using the WEAI for analysis in
different socio-cultural contexts:
Ghana, Bangladesh and Nepal
Hazel Malapit and Agnes Quisumbing
Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division
International Food Policy Research Institute
Supported by the US Agency for International Development through the
Bangladesh Policy Research and Strategy Support Program and the WEAI

16. Main messages (spoiler alert!)
• Patterns of (dis)empowerment vary across
country and context
• Indicators and policy instruments will
therefore vary
• Domains of empowerment are not equally
important in determining different outcomes
at the household, mother, and child level

17. The WEAI as an analytical tool
“…the Swiss army knife by itself is a very blunt instrument if you don’t open it up.
Try opening a bottle of wine with an unopened Swiss army knife – failure!”
Agnes Quisumbing speaking at the WEAI Learning Event, November 21, 2013

18. What’s next for WEAI?
• Piloted new questions based on lessons learned from
baseline surveys to improve
• Many organizations have adopted and modified the WEAI
for their own use
– Modifications are ad hoc, not coordinated
– Cannot make comparisons across different types of projects
with different objectives and approaches, so difficult to know
“what works”
• Develop a project-level WEAI as part of 2nd phase of
Gender, Agriculture and Assets Project (GAAP2)
– Refined, tested and minimal set of core indicators
– Flexibility to add-on modules relevant for particular project
types (eg, crops, livestock) and dimensions of empowerment
relevant to health and nutrition outcomes

19. Any questions? Contact Hazel Malapit: h.malapit@cgiar.org
FOR MORE INFORMATION
• Alkire, S., Meinzen-Dick, R., Peterman, A., Quisumbing, A. R., Seymour, G. and A.
Vaz. 2012. The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index.World Development
52: 71-91.
• WEAI Resource Center: http://www.ifpri.org/book-9075/ourwork/program/weai-resource-
center