Empowered women make their own life choices. About family, finances, farming—and much more. Many development projects say they want to contribute to women’s empowerment. But as we observe International Women’s Day (March 8), important questions remain: How do we know that what we’re doing works? How can we ensure our good intentions translate into good results?
These questions guided the development of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), launched in 2012. The WEAI not only measures women’s empowerment, but how it compares to that of the men in the same household. The project-level WEAI (pro-WEAI) was later developed to better monitor how individual agricultural development projects were doing at helping women reach higher levels of empowerment, as well as other important factors such as intimate partner violence.
Photo credit: Gender-responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transformation (GREAT) Project
