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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.

researcher spotlight

Kate Ambler

Kate Amber is a Senior Research Fellow in the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit. Kate’s research broadly focuses on interventions that can increase incomes for smallholders and other microenterprises in agrifood value chains, with a specific focus on the inclusion of women. This includes work on programming in fragile settings, innovations in agricultural finance, and regulatory solutions for food safety. 

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

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partnerships

The Walmart Foundation aims to provide convenient access to affordable food around the world. It works to provide economic opportunity and promote sustainable practices by partnering with research organizations as well as community organizers.

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Projects

Applying New Evidence for Women’s Empowerment (ANEW)

Applying New Evidence for Women’s Empowerment (ANEW)

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Publications

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Working Paper

Understanding the organizational approaches of funders and project implementers to strengthen women’s empowerment through agricultural collectives

2024Rubin, Deborah
Details

Understanding the organizational approaches of funders and project implementers to strengthen women’s empowerment through agricultural collectives

This paper reports on approaches for strengthening women’s empowerment that were implemented by project partners involved in the International Food Policy Research (IFPRI)-led Applying New Evidence for Women’s Empowerment (ANEW) project funded by the Walmart Foundation. The study explores the partner organizations’ websites and publications, project materials, and selected staff interviews to better understand how each envisions women’s empowerment and the pathways for supporting it. The four implementing project partners are Grameen Foundation, Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN) in India, Root Capital in Mexico, and TechnoServe in Guatemala. Their programs and their organizational approaches vary in whether they primarily focus on women rather than more broadly targeting both women and men and their gender relationships. Some organizations are more “organic” in integrating attention to gender and empowerment into their programs, designing and implementing an approach on a case by case basis. Others are more intentional in establishing organization-wide policies, strategies, and monitoring systems. The organizations also differ in their positions on supporting “economic empowerment” and clear economic benefits such as prioritizing increased income or assets in contrast to those that also seek to actively change social norms and achieve other social dimensions of empowerment that encompass behaviors around decision-making, mobility, and self-confidence. Another variation is in the organizations’ attention to enterprise development and, consequently to entrepreneurship and upgrading, and what aspects of women’s empowerment are most critical for achieving those goals. This paper offers implementers and their funders insight into organizational differences in approaches to women’s empowerment. The review demonstrates that both funders and implementers continue to focus on strengthening women’s economic empowerment by increasing women’s incomes and assets, often with good results. However, they often lack clear theories of change or explicit strategies to strengthen other dimensions of women’s empowerment. More nuanced, evidence-based theories of change and targeted actions could strengthen program design to expand and support women’s achievement of empowerment across all its dimensions.

Year published

2024

Authors

Rubin, Deborah

Citation

Rubin, Deborah. 2024. Understanding the organizational approaches of funders and project implementers to strengthen women’s empowerment through agricultural collectives. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2283. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/155195

Keywords

Agriculture; Gender; Policies; Women; Women’s Empowerment

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

Can farmer collectives empower women and improve their welfare? Mixed methods evidence from India

2024Ray, Soumyajit; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Bhanjdeo, Arundhita; Heckert, Jessica
Details

Can farmer collectives empower women and improve their welfare? Mixed methods evidence from India

Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs)—farmer collectives, often legally registered – can mitigate some of the constraints smallholder farmers face by improving their access to extension, services, and markets, especially for women. We evaluate the effects of a set of interventions delivered through women-only FPOs in Jharkhand, India, using a panel of 1200 households and a difference-in-difference model with nearest neighbor matching. A complementary qualitative study in the same areas helps triangulate and interpret our findings. The interventions aimed to improve agricultural productivity by coordinating production and improving access to services, while also providing gender sensitization trainings to FPO leaders and members. We collect household data on asset ownership and agricultural outcomes and individual data on women’s and men’s empowerment using the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index for Market Inclusion (pro-WEAI+MI). Our results for asset ownership, land cultivated, cropping intensity, and per acre yields, revenues or costs are statistically insignificant. Effects on men’s and women’s empowerment are mixed. While we see positive effects on women’s decisionmaking, asset ownership, control over income and attitudes towards intimate partner violence, the program is associated with an increase in workload and a reduction in active group membership for both men and women. Men appear to cede control over resources and decisionmaking to other household members. Additional analyses suggest that while some effects can occur in the short-term, others take time to accrue. FPO based interventions that aim to empower women or other marginalized groups likely require sustained investments over multiple years and will need to go beyond improving FPO functioning and increasing women’s participation to transforming social norms.

Year published

2024

Authors

Ray, Soumyajit; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Bhanjdeo, Arundhita; Heckert, Jessica

Citation

Ray, Soumyajit; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Bhanjdeo, Arundhita; and Heckert, Jessica. 2024. Can farmer collectives empower women and improve their welfare? Mixed methods evidence from India. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2267. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/151877

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Agriculture; Farmers Organizations; Cooperatives; Markets; Prices; Yields; Empowerment; Smallholders; Women; Gender

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Gender

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

Barriers and facilitators to women’s participation in farmer producer organizations: A qualitative study exploring women’s empowerment and collective efficacy in Jharkhand, India

2024Bhanjdeo, Arundhita
Details

Barriers and facilitators to women’s participation in farmer producer organizations: A qualitative study exploring women’s empowerment and collective efficacy in Jharkhand, India

Over the last decade in India, farmer producer organizations (FPOs) have emerged as a means of collectivizing smallholder farmers and providing them access to extension, innovation, and market services. FPOs that center women farmers, traditionally at a disadvantage vis-à-vis their male counterparts in access to resources and extension, can serve to enhance women’s agency and collective action in agricultural value chains. We used 59 key informant interviews and nine focus group discussions to examine the constraints to, and facilitators of, women’s and men’s participation in three women-only FPOs in Jharkhand, an eastern Indian state. Additionally, we study the gender and power dynamics in such FPOs and the potential of collective efficacy to enhance agricultural and empowerment outcomes. The FPO intervention we evaluated was supported by an NGO that provides FPO members with both agricultural and gender-based inputs to improve agronomic practices, market linkages, agricultural yields and profits, and the role of women both within the FPO and within their households and communities. In this paper, we provide contextual insights on ‘what works’ to empower women in this context. Women’s perceptions of the benefits from FPO membership were heterogeneous. Our qualitative analysis suggests a nuanced picture of women’s autonomy and decision-making within and outside their household, further shaped by women’s and men’s perception of shifts in women’s access to resources and services. The emerging lessons provide inputs for development implementers and policymakers to recognize diverse contextual barriers in designing FPO interventions to enable and enhance women empowerment outcomes. The research also contributes to the body of knowledge on local gender norms and understanding of empowerment.

Year published

2024

Authors

Bhanjdeo, Arundhita

Citation

Bhanjdeo, Arundhita. 2024. Barriers and facilitators to women’s participation in farmer producer organizations: A qualitative study exploring women’s empowerment and collective efficacy in Jharkhand, India. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2259. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/145187

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Agricultural Value Chains; Collectivization; Extension; Gender; Innovation; Women’s Empowerment

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Agriculture for Nutrition and Health

Record type

Working Paper

Blogs

Achieving women’s empowerment beyond income and asset increases: What do we still need to know?
IFPRI Blog
 | 
October 29, 2024

Achieving women’s empowerment beyond income and asset increases: What do we still need to know?

By Deborah Rubin

How development organizations think about gender.

Exploring gender roles and women’s empowerment in the coffee value chain and coffee cooperatives: Evidence from Mexico
IFPRI Blog
 | 
April 29, 2024

Exploring gender roles and women’s empowerment in the coffee value chain and coffee cooperatives: Evidence from Mexico

By Sarah Eissler and Deborah Rubin

Women in rural coffee production face opportunities and obstacles.

Lessons from a decade of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI)
IFPRI Blog
 | 
March 03, 2022

Lessons from a decade of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI)

By Emily Myers

An essential tool in assessing gender disparities driven by COVID-19, climate change, and other factors.

View all Blogs