IFPRI CGIAR
Subscribe

Back

What we do

With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

benin_samuel_0

researcher spotlight

Samuel Benin

Samuel Benin is the Acting Director for Africa in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit. He conducts research on national strategies and public investment for accelerating food systems transformation in Africa and provides analytical support to the African Union’s CAADP Biennial Review.

Where we work

Back

Where we work

IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

IFPRI Regional Programs

IFPRI Country Programs

Research by country and region

Subscribe

experts

Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion

Agnes Quisumbing

Senior Research Fellow

Follow

Agnes

at:

ORCiD

Bio

Agnes Quisumbing is a Senior Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit. She co-leads a research program that examines how closing the gap between men’s and women’s ownership and control of assets may lead to better development outcomes. She is currently engaged in impact evaluations of agricultural development programs, focusing on their impacts on gender asset inequality, in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Her past work at IFPRI analyzed the factors that enable individuals, households, and communities to move out of poverty over the long term, and on how resource allocation within households and families affects the design and outcome of development policies. Her research interests include poverty, gender, property rights, and economic mobility. She led a study on intrahousehold allocation and development policy in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Guatemala, and South Africa. Quisumbing has also worked on women’s land rights in Ghana, the Philippines, and Sumatra, and has been involved in longitudinal studies in Bangladesh, Guatemala, and the Philippines.

A citizen of the Philippines, Quisumbing joined IFPRI in 1995, before which she worked at the University of the Philippines, Diliman and Los Baños; the World Bank; Yale University; and the International Rice Research Institute. She received her PhD and MA in Economics from the University of the Philippines, Quezon City and her AB in Economics from De La Salle University in Manila.

Languages spoken: Cebuano, Chinese, English, Filipino (Tagalog), Spanish

Publications

Google Scholar Citations

Google Scholar Profile

RePEc Author Profile

CV

Publications

Resource thumbnail

Working Paper

Measuring women’s empowerment in national surveys: Development of the Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS)

2024
Seymour, Greg; Heckert, Jessica; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S.; Malapit, Hazel J.; Paz, Florencia; Faas, Simone; Myers, Emily; Doss, Cheryl; Sinharoy, Sheela S.
…more Cheong, Yuk Fai; Yount, Kathryn M.; Hassan, Md. Zahidul; Hassan, Md. Imrul; Sharma, Sudhindra; Pokhrel, Pankaj; Sagastume, Mónica Dardón; Kanyanda, Shelton S. E.; Vundru, Wilbert D.; Moylan, Heather
Details

Measuring women’s empowerment in national surveys: Development of the Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS)

Monitoring progress toward Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5—achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls—remains challenging unless we incorporate women’s empowerment metrics into nationally representative and multi-topic surveys. To address this data gap, we designed the Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS) as a streamlined empowerment module suitable for the 50×2030 Initiative, a global partnership that aims to build capacity and close the agricultural data gap in 50 countries by 2030, as well as other large multi-topic surveys. WEMNS measures women’s and men’s empowerment and is applicable to urban and rural areas and a variety of livelihood strategies (farming, self-employment, wage labor) across countries in different stages of structural transformation. WEMNS is a counting-based, multidimensional index composed of four domains: intrinsic agency, instrumental agency, collective agency, and agency-enabling resources. Each domain is measured with binary indicators derived from question sets in the WEMNS module. In this paper, we describe the development and testing of WEMNS and its components, including: (1) WEMNS’s distinctiveness from other empowerment metrics; (2) the iterative approach used to develop and pilot the WEMNS module in Bangladesh, Guatemala, Malawi, and Nepal, using cognitive interviewing, phone surveys, and face-to-face surveys; (3) analysis of quantitative pilot data; and (4) a summary of the findings from the cognitive interviewing. The paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned and possibilities for further development of WEMNS and other empowerment metrics.

Year published

2024

Authors

Seymour, Greg; Heckert, Jessica; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S.; Malapit, Hazel J.; Paz, Florencia; Faas, Simone; Myers, Emily; Doss, Cheryl; Sinharoy, Sheela S.; Cheong, Yuk Fai; Yount, Kathryn M.; Hassan, Md. Zahidul; Hassan, Md. Imrul; Sharma, Sudhindra; Pokhrel, Pankaj; Sagastume, Mónica Dardón; Kanyanda, Shelton S. E.; Vundru, Wilbert D.; Moylan, Heather

Citation

Seymour, Greg; Heckert, Jessica; Quisumbing, Agnes; Meinzen-Dick, Ruth; Malapit, Hazel; Paz, Florencia; Faas, Simone; Myers, Emily; et al. 2024. Measuring women’s empowerment in national surveys: Development of the Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS). Discussion Paper 2254. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute

Keywords

Gender Equality; Women; Women’s Empowerment; Data; Agricultural Development; Livelihoods; Surveys

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Agriculture for Nutrition and Health

Record type

Working Paper

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

Increasing production diversity and diet quality: Evidence from Bangladesh

2024Ahmed, Akhter; Coleman, Fiona M.; Ghostlaw, Julie; Hoddinott, John F.; Menon, Purnima; Parvin, Aklima; Pereira, Audrey; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Roy, Shalini; Younus, Masuma
Details

Increasing production diversity and diet quality: Evidence from Bangladesh

In the context of rural Bangladesh, we assess whether agriculture training alone, nutrition behavior communication change (BCC) alone, combined agriculture training and nutrition BCC, or agriculture training and nutrition BCC combined with gender sensitization improve: (a) production diversity, either on household fields or through crop, livestock, or aquaculture activities carried out near the family homestead; and (b) diet diversity and the quality of household diets. All treatment arms were implemented by government employees. Implementation quality was high. No treatment increased production diversification of crops grown on fields. Treatment arms with agricultural training did increase the number of different crops grown in homestead gardens and the likelihood of any egg, dairy, or fish production but the magnitudes of these effect sizes were small. All agricultural treatment arms had, in percentage terms, large effects on measures of levels of homestead production. However, because baseline levels of production were low, the magnitude of these changes in absolute terms was modest. Nearly all treatment arms improved measures of food consumption and diet with the largest effects found when nutrition and agriculture training were combined. Relative to treatments combining agriculture and nutrition training, we find no significant impact of adding the gender sensitization on our measures of production diversity or diet quality. Interventions that combine agricultural training and nutrition BCC can improve both production diversity and diet quality, but they are not a panacea. They can, however, contribute toward better diets of rural households.

Year published

2024

Authors

Ahmed, Akhter; Coleman, Fiona M.; Ghostlaw, Julie; Hoddinott, John F.; Menon, Purnima; Parvin, Aklima; Pereira, Audrey; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Roy, Shalini; Younus, Masuma

Citation

Ahmed, Akhter; Coleman, Fiona; Ghostlaw, Julie; Hoddinott, John F.; Menon, Purnima; Parvin, Aklima; et al. 2024. Increasing production diversity and diet quality: Evidence from Bangladesh. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 106(3): 1089-1110. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12427

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Agriculture; Agricultural Training; Nutrition; Behaviour; Communication; Gender; Diversification; Production; Dietary Diversity; Aquaculture; Rural Areas; Households

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12427 Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Journal Article

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

Impact evaluation of a maternal and child cash transfer intervention, integrated with nutrition, early childhood development, and agriculture messaging (MAZIKO-IE): A study protocol for a cluster-randomised controlled trial

2024The Maziko Trial Team; Gelli, Aulo; Duchoslav, Jan; Gladstone, Melissa; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Katundu, Mangani; Maleta, Ken; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Bliznashka, Lilia; Ahun, Marilyn
Details

Impact evaluation of a maternal and child cash transfer intervention, integrated with nutrition, early childhood development, and agriculture messaging (MAZIKO-IE): A study protocol for a cluster-randomised controlled trial

Children in Malawi face high rates of malnutrition and are at risk of not reaching their developmental potential. Community-based childcare centres (CBCCs) can be cost-effective platforms for scaling-up early childhood development (ECD) and nutrition social behaviour change (SBC) interventions. However, evidence also suggests potential synergies from coupling nutrition SBC with cash transfers (CT), given that rural households in Malawi face high levels of poverty and recurring extreme lean season food-security shocks. The Maziko trial is aimed at evaluating the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of using CBCCs and parenting care groups as platforms to improve maternal diets and child nutrition and development by providing nutrition-sensitive SBC and CT intervention packages in communities already receiving a standard of care Government SBC program.

Year published

2024

Authors

The Maziko Trial Team; Gelli, Aulo; Duchoslav, Jan; Gladstone, Melissa; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Katundu, Mangani; Maleta, Ken; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Bliznashka, Lilia; Ahun, Marilyn

Citation

The Maziko Trial Team. 2024. Impact evaluation of a maternal and child cash transfer intervention, integrated with nutrition, early childhood development, and agriculture messaging (MAZIKO-IE): A study protocol for a cluster-randomised controlled trial. Trials 25: 46. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-023-07782-3

Country/Region

Malawi

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Maternal and Child Health; Nutrition; Community Organizations; Child Care; Child Development; Rural Areas; Food Security; Cash Transfers

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-023-07782-3 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

Blogs

ANEW way forward: Strategies to promote women’s empowerment in farmer producer organizations
IFPRI Blog
 | 
February 21, 2024

ANEW way forward: Strategies to promote women’s empowerment in farmer producer organizations

By Jessica Heckert, Kalyani Raghunathan, Agnes Quisumbing, Emma Fawcett, Emily Myers, Flor Paz, and Soumyajit Ray

Examining a promising avenue for development programs.

Introducing the Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS)
IFPRI Blog
 | 
October 13, 2023

Introducing the Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS)

By Emily Myers, Jessica Heckert, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Hazel Malapit, Greg Seymour, and Agnes Quisumbing

A new tool to address the gender data gap in agricultural development.

Developing a Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems
IFPRI Blog
 | 
May 23, 2023

Developing a Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems

By Jessica Heckert, Agnes Quisumbing, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Greg Seymour, Hazel Malapit, Florencia Paz, Sheela Sinharoy, Kathryn M. Yount, and Heather Moylan

Closing the gender data gap in agricultural development.

Events

Introducing the new Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS)
IFPRI Policy Seminar

 | 

February 22, 2024, 9:00 – 10:30 am

Introducing the new Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS)

Virtual Event: February 22, 2024 at 9:00am-10:30am EST. This event will present the WEMNS metric, review the development of the tool, and discuss its use to advance women’s empowerment. A panel of stakeholders from government and national statistical offices and from multilateral organizations will discuss the potential of WEMNS for promoting and monitoring women’s empowerment as part of national statistical surveys.

Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS)
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

September 20, 2023, 1:30 – 4:30 pm

Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS)

Hybrid Event: September 20, 2023 – 1:30 PM to 4:30 PM CEST. This event will present the WEMNS tool and discuss its use to further advance women’s empowerment.

Assessing Progress toward Women’s Empowerment in Agricultural Development Projects
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

September 19, 2023, 1:30 – 4:30 pm

Assessing Progress toward Women’s Empowerment in Agricultural Development Projects

Hybrid Event: September 19, 2023 – 1:30 PM to 4:30 PM CEST. This event will provide a platform for implementers and partners to discuss approaches that have worked to empower women across projects and identify implications for future programming and scaling up.

News

January 21, 2021 | In the News

Gender equality and food security in rural South Asia: A holistic approach to the SDGs (New Security Beat)

New Security Beat (Wilson Center) published an article on food security, land ownership, and gender.  In South Asia, food security and nutrition have not improved significantly despite the region’s economic growth. Importantly, both are deeply influenced by gender relations in the agricultural sector. Enforcing women’s access to land and other productive assets, accounting for rural women’s growing work […]

February 04, 2020 | In the News

How can data build a truer picture of the gender gap in food insecurity? (Devex)

Devex published an article on the challenges of an accurate picture of the differences in food security between men and women when using typical household survey methods. Research Fellow Jessica Heckert stated that “countrywide surveys offer the advantage of gathering data on a wider variety of topics, but because of that breadth in a single […]

November 12, 2019 | In the News

The 19th Annual ReSAKSS Conference Opens Monday In Lomé (Togo 24)

Togo 24 reported on the opening of the conference and the 2019 Annual trends and outlook report: Gender equality in rural Africa: From commitments to outcomes. (2019 ATOR). The Report presents an Africa-wide analysis on a topic of strategic importance to the CAADP agenda. The ATOR 2019 report examines the progress and results of research […]