27 February 2012: The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in collaboration with the US Government’s Feed the Future Initiative and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, has launched an initiative to measure women’s empowerment in the agriculture sector.

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) focuses on five areas: decisions over agricultural production; power over productive resources; decisions over income; leadership in the community; and time use. The index has been piloted in Bangladesh, Guatemala and Uganda to track changes in women’s empowerment resulting directly from Feed the Future activities, which aim to, among other things, help countries to transform their agriculture sectors to grow enough food to sustainably feed their populations.

The index represents an advancement over traditional indicators of women’s empowerment like money and education, as it explicitly identifies additional indicators of empowerment. The index will be used for performance monitoring and impact evaluation. IFPRI is a member of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). [IFPRI Press Release]