The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) is a new survey-based index designed to measure the empowerment, agency and inclusion of women in the agricultural sector. The WEAI was initially developed as a tool to measure the greater inclusion of women that may result from broad-based agricultural growth. It was designed to reflect women’s empowerment that may result from the US Government’s Feed the Future Initiative, which commissioned the development of the WEAI. Yet the WEAI can also be used more generally by other organizations to assess the state of empowerment and gender parity in agriculture, to identify key areas in which empowerment needs to be strengthened and to track progress over time. This technical paper was written by researchers from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) to document the piloting and development of the WEAI.

Citation: Alkire, S., Meinzen-Dick, R., Peterman, A., Quisumbing, A., Seymour, G. and Vaz, A. (2012). 'The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index', OPHI Research in Progress 35a, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), University of Oxford.

See also  World Development, 2013, Vol. 52, pp. 71-91, and OPHI Working Paper 58 (2013).