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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

Emily Schmidt

Emily Schmidt is a Senior Research Fellow in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit. Her most recent research explores household livelihood strategies in Papua New Guinea, including linkages between agriculture, poverty, and nutrition outcomes among rural smallholder farmers.

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Since 1975, IFPRI’s research has been informing policies and development programs to improve food security, nutrition, and livelihoods around the world.

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experts

Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion

Ara Go

Senior Program Manager

Bio

Ara Go is a Senior Program Manager in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit. She coordinates research, technical assistance, and capacity strengthening activities for projects on gender, women’s empowerment, and nutrition-sensitive social protection. Before joining IFPRI, Ara worked with the United States Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Food Security (now the Bureau of Resilience, Environment, and Food Security) as a gender program analyst. She holds an MA in international development with a concentration in gender and global health from the University of Denver.

CGIAR GENDER Impact Platform

Publications

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Journal Article

Enhancing agency and empowerment in agricultural development projects: A synthesis of mixed methods impact evaluations from the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2)

2024
Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S.; Malapit, Hazel J.; Seymour, Greg; Heckert, Jessica; Doss, Cheryl; Johnson, Nancy L.; Rubin, Deborah; Ramani, Gayathri; Myers, Emily
…more van Biljon, Chloe; Mulema, Annet; Hannan, Anika; de Brauw, Alan; Go, Ara; Argento, Federica; Ahmed, Akhter; Roy, Shalini; Schreinemachers, Pepijn; de Brauw, Alan; Kramer, Berber; Murphy, Mike; Crookston, Benjamin; Gash, Megan; Theis, Sophie; Bellemare, Marc; Casier, Bart; James, Susan; Krause, Brooke; Lardinois, Mathias; McCarthy, Aine; Gabrysch, Sabine; Sinharoy, Sheela; Waid, Jillian; Wendt, Amanda; Ganaba, Rasmane; Gelli, Aulo; Martinez, Elena M.; Pedehombga, Abdoulaye; Sanou, Armande; Zougouri, Sita; Alonso, Silvia; Galiè, Alessandra; Kakota, Tasokwa; Leroy, Jef L.; Palloni, Giordano; Bryan, Elizabeth; Mekonnen, Dawit; Miah, Mamun; Kumar, Neha; Siraj, Saiqa; Alemu, Mihret; Boonabaana, Brenda; Mekonnen, Dawit Kelemework; Kaaria, Susan; Hillesland, Marya; Mane, Erdgin; Slavchevska, Vanya; Choudhury, Avijit; Khetan, Madhu; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Thai, Giang; Gray, Bobbi; Benali, Marwan; Janzen, Sarah; Joshi, Neena; Magnan, Nicholas; Pradhan, Rajendra; Sharma, Sudhindra
Details

Enhancing agency and empowerment in agricultural development projects: A synthesis of mixed methods impact evaluations from the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2)

Development interventions increasingly include women’s empowerment and gender equality among their objectives, but evaluating their impact has been stymied by the lack of measures that are comparable across interventions. This paper synthesizes the findings of 11 mixed-methods impact evaluations of agricultural development projects from South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa that were part of the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2). As part of GAAP2, qualitative and quantitative data were used to develop and validate the multidimensional project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI), which was used to assess the impact of GAAP2 projects on women’s empowerment. This paper assesses the extent to which: (1) a two- to three-year agricultural development project can contribute to women’s empowerment; and (2) a suite of methods comprising a standardized quantitative measure of women’s empowerment and a set of qualitative protocols, can evaluate such impacts. Our synthesis finds that the most common positive significant impacts were on the instrumental and collective agency indicators that comprise pro-WEAI, owing to the group-based approaches used. We found few projects significantly improved intrinsic agency, even among those with explicitly stated objectives to change gender norms. Unsurprisingly, we find mixed, and mostly null impacts on aggregate pro-WEAI, with positive impacts more likely in the South Asian, rather than African, cases. Our results highlight the need for projects to design their strategies specifically for empowerment, rather than assume that projects aiming to reach and benefit women automatically empower them. Our study also shows the value of a suite of methods containing a common metric to compare empowerment impacts and qualitative protocols to understand and contextualize these impacts.

Year published

2024

Authors

Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S.; Malapit, Hazel J.; Seymour, Greg; Heckert, Jessica; Doss, Cheryl; Johnson, Nancy L.; Rubin, Deborah; Ramani, Gayathri; Myers, Emily; van Biljon, Chloe; Mulema, Annet; Hannan, Anika; de Brauw, Alan; Go, Ara; Argento, Federica; Ahmed, Akhter; Roy, Shalini; Schreinemachers, Pepijn; de Brauw, Alan; Kramer, Berber; Murphy, Mike; Crookston, Benjamin; Gash, Megan; Theis, Sophie; Bellemare, Marc; Casier, Bart; James, Susan; Krause, Brooke; Lardinois, Mathias; McCarthy, Aine; Gabrysch, Sabine; Sinharoy, Sheela; Waid, Jillian; Wendt, Amanda; Ganaba, Rasmane; Gelli, Aulo; Martinez, Elena M.; Pedehombga, Abdoulaye; Sanou, Armande; Zougouri, Sita; Alonso, Silvia; Galiè, Alessandra; Kakota, Tasokwa; Leroy, Jef L.; Palloni, Giordano; Bryan, Elizabeth; Mekonnen, Dawit; Miah, Mamun; Kumar, Neha; Siraj, Saiqa; Alemu, Mihret; Boonabaana, Brenda; Mekonnen, Dawit Kelemework; Kaaria, Susan; Hillesland, Marya; Mane, Erdgin; Slavchevska, Vanya; Choudhury, Avijit; Khetan, Madhu; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Thai, Giang; Gray, Bobbi; Benali, Marwan; Janzen, Sarah; Joshi, Neena; Magnan, Nicholas; Pradhan, Rajendra; Sharma, Sudhindra

Citation

Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S.; Seymour, Greg; Heckert, Jessica; Myers, Emily; and the GAAP2 for pro-WEAI Study Team. 2024. Enhancing agency and empowerment in agricultural development projects: A synthesis of mixed methods impact evaluations from the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2). Journal of Rural Studies 108(May 2024): 103295. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2024.103295

Keywords

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

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2024.103295 Source record

Project

Agriculture for Nutrition and Health

Record type

Journal Article

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Conference Proceedings

WEAI-Climate Stakeholder Consultation Workshop

2023Bryan, Elizabeth; Magalhaes, Marilia; Go, Ara; Malapit, Hazel J.
Details

WEAI-Climate Stakeholder Consultation Workshop

The Methods Module of the CGIAR GENDER Impact Platform convened a group of experts on climate change and gender from CGIAR and partner organizations at a workshop held in Washington, DC, November 9-10, 2023. The goal of the workshop was to identify measurement gaps and best practices to support the development of a new tool for measuring women’s empowerment in the context of climate change and resilience. This new tool will complement the existing project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) and will be developed and piloted in collaboration with IFPRI’s Gender, Climate Change and Nutrition Integration Initiative (GCAN) over the next two years.

Year published

2023

Authors

Bryan, Elizabeth; Magalhaes, Marilia; Go, Ara; Malapit, Hazel J.

Citation

Bryan, Elizabeth; Magalhaes, Marilia; Go, Ara; and Malapit, Hazel J. 2023. WEAI-Climate Stakeholder Consultation Workshop. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.137053.

Keywords

Gender; Women’s Empowerment; Resilience; Climate Change

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.137053 Source record

Record type

Conference Proceedings

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Brief

Uncovering more than a decade of WEAI use in USAID projects

2023Moore, Lindsey; Dissanayake, Madhu; Malapit, Hazel J.; Go, Ara
Details

Uncovering more than a decade of WEAI use in USAID projects

Since its launch in 2012, the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) has been widely used in USAID projects to prioritize and target activities that aim to promote women’s empowerment. It has been implemented in at least 37 countries by more than 200 partners and 60 different USAID operating units, offering valuable insights into the gender dynamics of agricultural production and identifying opportunities to enhance gender equality and women’s empowerment. By providing a more nuanced understanding of the challenges that women encounter in the agricultural sector, WEAI has played a crucial role in enhancing the ability of USAID programming to improve the lives of women and their families. This report presents key findings gathered from all reported WEAI use cases in the Development Experience Clearinghouse (DEC), the largest resource for USAID-funded technical and project materials. A use case refers to a unique, real-world ex ample in which WEAI has been applied or utilized. A use case can demonstrate how WEAI has been used in a specific context or project, providing insight into its effectiveness, limitations, and potential for future applications. Together, these findings highlight the importance of WEAI as a tool for promoting gender equality and empowering women in the agricultural sector, while also providing useful insights that can inform future policies and programs.

Year published

2023

Authors

Moore, Lindsey; Dissanayake, Madhu; Malapit, Hazel J.; Go, Ara

Citation

Moore, Lindsey; Dissanayake, Madhu; Malapit, Hazel J.; and Go, Ara. 2023. Uncovering more than a decade of WEAI use in USAID projects. WEAI Applications and Insights 2. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://hdl.handle.net/10568/140304

Keywords

Gender; Women’s Empowerment; Gender Equality; Agricultural Production; Agricultural Sector; Agriculture; Equality; Women

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.136856 Source record

Record type

Brief

Blogs

Now available: The project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index Distance Learning Module
IFPRI Blog
 | 
March 08, 2021

Now available: The project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index Distance Learning Module

By Ara Go and Emily Myers

A new online course launching on International Women's Day offers training for researchers and development practitioners.

Events

From Research to Impact: Towards just and Resilient Agri-food Systems
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

October 9 to 12, 2023

From Research to Impact: Towards just and Resilient Agri-food Systems

Conference: October 09, 2023 – 9:00 AM to October 12, 2023 – 6:00 PM IST. IFPRI is participating in the 2023 annual CGIAR gender research conference will take place in New Delhi, India.