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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.

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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

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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.

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experts

Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion

Emily Myers

Senior Research Analyst

Bio

Emily Myers is a Senior Research Analyst in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit. Since joining IFPRI, she has worked on qualitative studies across Africa south of the Sahara and in Bangladesh. She uses qualitative methods to examine gender, women’s empowerment, and participation in agricultural value chains. She also facilitates IFPRI’s Gender Task Force, a cross-institutional group that supports researchers in incorporating gender into their work and disseminates IFPRI’s gender research. She earned a master’s degree in Public Health from Emory University.

Languages spoken: English, Spanish

Publications

Publications

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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

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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; Thai, Giang; Ramani, Gayathri V.
…more Myers, Emily; GAAP2 for pro-WEAI Study Team
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; Thai, Giang; Ramani, Gayathri V.; Myers, Emily; GAAP2 for pro-WEAI Study Team

Citation

Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S.; Seymour, Greg; Heckert, Jessica; Myers, Emily; GAAP2 for pro-WEAI Study Team; et al. 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

Southern Asia; Sub-saharan Africa; 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

Resource thumbnail

Working Paper

Development of a Women’s Empowerment metric for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WE-WASH)

2023
Heckert, Jessica; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Myers, Emily; Ramani, Gayathri V.; Faas, Simone; Ferguson, Nathaniel; Seymour, Greg; Malapit, Hazel J.; Paz, Florencia; Chiwasa, Febbie
…more Chilalika, Joan; Kamwaba-Mtethiwa, Jean; Chirwa, Gowokani Chijere; Simkoko, Abigail; Chilungo, Abdallah; Upadhyaya, Rachana; Pradhan, Meeta S.; Joshi, Nira; Shrestha, Sanish
Details

Development of a Women’s Empowerment metric for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WE-WASH)

There is a growing focus on gender-sensitive approaches and women’s empowerment in the water, sanitation, and hygiene sectors. At the same time, there is a lack of metrics to measure women’s empowerment in the WASH sector. Such metrics are important for understanding the types of programmatic interventions that are most needed for addressing women’s empowerment, as well as for assessing their impacts on women’s empowerment. In this report, we describe the development of a Women’s Empowerment metrics for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WE-WASH). We collected data from individual women and men in 812 households in Malawi and 826 households in Nepal. Using the data, we develop 14 indicators and establish cutoff thresholds (i.e., whether the individual is empowered) in the areas of intrinsic, instrumental, and collective agency in WASH; instrumental and intrinsic agency in menstrual hygiene management; and the empowerment environment (or resources for empowerment). In each country, we observe differences in empowerment levels between women and men, that favor men on most outcomes. Notably, in both countries, we find that women are much less likely than men to contribute to WASH infrastructure decisions, and most women are spending an undue amount of time contributing to WASH-related labor. In Nepal especially, agency related to menstrual hygiene management is also a substantial area of disempowerment for women.

Year published

2023

Authors

Heckert, Jessica; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Myers, Emily; Ramani, Gayathri V.; Faas, Simone; Ferguson, Nathaniel; Seymour, Greg; Malapit, Hazel J.; Paz, Florencia; Chiwasa, Febbie; Chilalika, Joan; Kamwaba-Mtethiwa, Jean; Chirwa, Gowokani Chijere; Simkoko, Abigail; Chilungo, Abdallah; Upadhyaya, Rachana; Pradhan, Meeta S.; Joshi, Nira; Shrestha, Sanish

Citation

Heckert, Jessica; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Myers, Emily; Ramani, Gayathri V.; Faas, Simone; Ferguson, Nathaniel; et al. 2023. Development of a Women’s Empowerment metric for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WE-WASH). IFPRI Discussion Paper 2207. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.137008

Country/Region

Malawi; Nepal

Keywords

Southern Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Africa; Southern Asia; Asia; Eastern Africa; Women’s Empowerment; Gender; Water; Capacity Development; Hygiene; Infrastructure; Men; Women

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.137008 Source record

Record type

Working Paper

Blogs

Policy seminar: Scaling up the new Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS) tool
IFPRI Blog
 | 
March 07, 2024

Policy seminar: Scaling up the new Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS) tool

By Emily Myers, Flor Paz, and Jennifer Johnson

Research on gender and women’s empowerment in food systems and global development is central to IFPRI’s mission. Here we mark International Women’s Day (March 8)—with the theme “Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress”—with an account of our continuing efforts to develop and deploy metrics on women’s empowerment in agriculture. The 2015 adoption of Sustainable Development Goal […]

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.

Events

Seeds of Change Conference
IFPRI at External Event

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April 2 to 4, 2019

Seeds of Change Conference

IFPRI is participating extensively in the Seeds of Change conference— the first international conference on gender equality through agricultural research for development. This interdisciplinary conference brings together researchers and practitioners from diverse fields of social science and agriculture focusing on food/commodity/cash crops, subsistence/semi-subsistence sectors, supply chains, climate, forestry, fisheries, and water management. The conference is jointly funded […]

Pro-WEAI: A New Tool for Measuring Women’s Empowerment in Agricultural Development Projects
IFPRI Program/Country Event

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October 25, 2018, 9:00 – 12:00 pm

Pro-WEAI: A New Tool for Measuring Women’s Empowerment in Agricultural Development Projects

The pro-WEAI is a new survey-based index that builds on the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) and is adapted for project use with a closer focus on aspects of empowerment related to health and nutrition. The index is being developed by IFPRI’s Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2), a learning and capacity-building initiative […]