Presentation made by Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Senior Research Fellow at IFPRI, World Water Week,August 26-31, 2012, Stockholm, Sweden

1. Women‘s Empowerment in
Agriculture Index (WEAI):
Lessons for Water

2. Purpose of WEAI
• Design, develop, and test an index to measure
the greater inclusion of women in agricultural
sector growth that has occurred as a result of
US Government intervention under the Feed
the Future Initiative
– To be used to assess the impact of Feed the
Future‘s impact in 19 countries
• Possible applications to understand key areas
for attention in designing programs or assess
impact of NGO, other agricultural programs

3. What is new about the WEAI?
• An aggregate index in two parts:
– Five domains of empowerment (5DE): assesses
whether women are empowered in the 5 domains of
empowerment in agriculture
– Gender Parity Index (GPI): reflects the percentage of
women who are as empowered as the men in their
households
• Survey-based index, not based on aggregate statistics or
secondary data, constructed using interviews of the
primary male and primary female adults in the same
household
– Piloted in Bangladesh, Uganda, Guatemala—comparable across
countries, with some adaptation

4. Five Domains
of Women’s
Empowerment
in Agriculture

5. Case studies
Case studies consisted of
interviews on five domains with
narratives to explain answers,
describe ―life stories,‖ and get
concepts of empowerment from
men and women themselves
“Being empowered, it means
that the woman can do things
too, not just the man”
~ Woman, Guatemala aged 63

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

7. Gender Parity Index (GPI)
Reflects two things:
1. The percentage of women who enjoy gender parity. A
woman enjoys gender parity if
– she is empowered or
– if her empowerment score is equal to or greater than the
empowerment score of the primary male in her household.
2. The empowerment gap - the average percentage shortfall
that a woman without parity experiences relative to the
male in her household.
The GPI adapts the Foster Greer Thorbecke Poverty Gap measure to reflect
gender parity.

8. Lilian, Uganda (Empowerment Score 83%)
Has parity
with her
husband
Wilson

9. Seema is Disempowered (Empowerment Score =
64%)
She has
not
achieved
parity with
her
husband

10. Bangladesh: How to increase empowerment?

11. Bangladesh: How to increase empowerment?
Contribution
of each
indicator to
disempower-
ment of
women and
men

12. Uganda: How to increase empowerment?

13. The WEAI can be used to:
1) Understand major areas of
disempowerment
2) Show how to increase women‘s
empowerment
3) Track changes over time in He and Ae
4) Monitor progress toward gender equality

14. Applications to Water
• WEAI is quantitative, outcome indicator (may
need other qualitative process indicators, e.g.
for AMCOW)
• Level of measurement: individual or community?
• Same or different domains of empowerment?
• Gender parity: measure men as well as women?

15. 5 Domains of Empowerment for Water?
• Production: Involvement in different water-related
activities/uses, and decision-making related to each water use
• Resources: Ownership and decisionmaking power over productive
resources (or focus on water-related infrastructure and water
rights?)
• Income: Sole or joint control over the use of income and
expenditures (how relevant for water?)
• Leadership: Group membership (all or water user groups?), comfort
in speaking in public, feel able to make changes in water-related
infrastructure or institutions?
• Time: productive and domestic tasks and satisfaction with the
available time for leisure—very relevant for water, and may show
value of improved domestic or garden uses, close to home