An adaptation of the Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index from a Five to a Six domain Metric

Elizabeth WaithanjiILRI

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Five Domain WEAI (Alkire et al., 2013) Six Domain adaptation DOMAIN /

DIMENSION INDICATORS

1 Production Input in productive decisionsAutonomy in production

2 Resources Ownership of assetsPurchase, sale, or transfer of assetsAccess to and decisions on credit

3 Income Control over use of income4 Leadership Group membership

Speaking in publicOwnership of an identity card

5 Time WorkloadLeisure

6* Health Autonomy in making appropriate decisions on reproductive healthAttitudes towards gender based violence

DOMAIN / DIMENSION

INDICATORS

1 Production Input in productive decisionsAutonomy in production

2 Resources Ownership of assetsPurchase, sale, or transfer of assetsAccess to and decisions on credit

3 Income Control over use of income

4 Leadership Group membershipSpeaking in public

5 Time WorkloadLeisure

1st Adaptation – Domains / Dimensions

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Reasons for 1st Adaptation

• Pilot study intending to integrate rights and economic development interventions

• Establish a tool to measure impacts in terms of economic development and rights

• Hypothesis to be tested by study“Combining women’s economic opportunities and women’s rights could have the potential to lead to broader women’s empowerment”

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Pilot study where Adapted WEAI Used

• Study called “Evaluating the Impacts of Livestock Micro-credit and Value Chain Programs on Women’s Empowerment”

• Project in study included– Kenya Agriculture Research Institute (KARI) indigenous

chicken project (a baseline prior to sale of chickens to resettled internally displaced people and indigenous communities)

– Juhudi Kilimo an agriculture and livestock microcredit intervention

– East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) project – a dairy project intervention that enhances participation of dairy farmer groups using the “hub Model”

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EADD Hub Model

TRANSPORTERS

TESTING

FARMERS

FIELD DAYS

FEED SUPPLYAI & EXTENSION

VILLAGE BANKS

OTHER RELATED MEs

HARDWARE SUPPLIERS

CHILLING HUB

Source EADD

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Five Domain WEAI (Alkire et al., 2013) Six Domain adaptation

Attainment of EmpowermentWhen adequate in 4 out of 5 domainsThe combination of weighted indicators add up to 80% or moreEach domain has a weight of 1/5 (one fifth)“Joint “ (decisionmaking and ownership) are considered to signify adequacy

2nd Adaptation – Cut off points for Adequacy

Attainment of EmpowermentWhen adequate in 4 out of 6 domains

The combination of weighted indicators add up to 67% or more

Each domain has a weight of 1/6 (one sixth)

“Joint “ (decisionmaking and ownership) are considered not to signify adequacy

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Reasons for 2nd Adaptation

• A sixth domain health with two indicators and a third indicator to the leadership domain were added and needed to be factored-in in the calculation of the index

• Decision not to recognize “joint” ownership and decisionmaking to signify empowerment lowered the adequacy scores such that everyone became inadequate if cut of were left at 80%

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Results using six dimension adaptation (5 dimension values in parenthesis)

Project Component 6DE GPI WEAI (All Women)

WEAI (WMMM only)

Indigenous chicken value chain (KARI)

Malindi 0.72 (0.91) 0.87 (0.97) 0.74 (0.92) 0.70 (0.90)Naivasha 0.82 (0.95) 0.93 (0.99) 0.83 (0.95) 0.79 (0.94)

Dairy value chain

(EADD)

Selling milk to dairy

0.62 (0.90) 0.82 (0.95) 0.64 (0.91) 0.64 (0.89)

Selling milk through other modes

0.60 (0.87) 0.83 (0.97) 0.62 (0.89) 0.62 (0.86)

Micro-credit program (Juhudi Kilimo)

Taken loans 0.73 (0.93) 0.86 (0.97) 0.74 (0.94) 0.70 (0.92)Not taken loans

0.70 (0.92) 0.87 (0.96) 0.71 (0.92) 0.71 (0.91)

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Similarities and differences between 5DE WEAI and its 6DE adaptation results

• The sixth domain, health, demonstrated magnitudes of adequacy and inadequacy like the other domains – e.g. if (wo)men were empowered in the health domain they were empowered in the other domains, the converse was true too …

• Overall, the same patterns of empowerment emerged when both 5DE and 6DE tools were used, but the values obtained when 5DE was used were much higher

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Conclusion

• Adding a sixth domain enables researchers to measure empowerment in terms of economic advancement and rights

• It will be possible to establish if interventions using rights and economic empowerment interventions have a greater impact on empowerment than those using one or other intervention

• 5DE WEAI has higher values than its 6DE adaptation. Everyone appeared empowered when 5DE WEAI was used, hence the need to adapt the tool to context

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Adaptation challenge

• Calculating WEAI, whether 5DE or 6DE is difficult and complex [because it involves typing long syntaxes] making the calculation very “technician” dependent – gender scientist who are mainly qualitative lose control of process

• Establishing adequacy cut off points, especially the percentage value (80% or 67%) requires some toggling back and forth giving it an element of subjectivity – this has been criticized (brutally) by mainstream economists