Women are key to agricultural transformation around the world, but various obstacles and economic constraints limit their contributions to their households and communities. The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) is an innovative tool that seeks to identify such obstacles, and may be used to track gender equality and measure empowerment, agency, and women’s inclusion in the agricultural sector. This tool also measures women’s empowerment relative to men within their households.

The WEAI was launched in 2012 at the 56th UN Commission on the Status of Women. Over 230 organizations have used it across 58 countries to track progress toward women’s empowerment and gender equality in agriculture. Ten years since its launch, diverse partners, including governments, have taken the lead in collecting data on women’s empowerment using WEAI-based metrics.

This side event will provide an opportunity to discuss country experiences in using the WEAI and reflect on its impact on measuring and tracking gender equity and equality. The discussion will also identify policy-relevant and actionable WEAI-based insights that countries and partners would like to see for the Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS) and present a vision for the next ten years of WEAI. 

IFPRI Participants

• Akhter Ahmed, Senior Research Fellow / Country Representative, IFPRI-Bangladesh
• Agnes Quisumbing, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
• John Ulimwengu, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI