Governments’ adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 1995—which advanced a set of common principles on gender equality—elevated women’s empowerment in policy as an end in itself, not just as a means to achieving other development outcomes. While great strides have been made in developing tools to track progress toward gender equality since then, nationally representative and multi-topic surveys still often lack concise yet comprehensive measures of empowerment. The Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS) was developed by IFPRI and partners as a solution to this data gap.
WEMNS is a streamlined tool intended for use in large-scale, multitopic surveys in both rural and urban areas and was designed to be added to existing surveys. Unlike previous metrics, WEMNS was designed to be relevant across a wide range of livelihood strategies and only takes 15 minutes to implement. Using a similar methodology as multidimensional poverty indexes, the tool has 12 indicators spread across four domains that can be used to calculate an overall index score or broken down by indicator, allowing for comparisons across sub-populations.
A March 20, 2025 side event at the 69th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) at United Nations Headquarters in New York introduced the latest version of WEMNS and reviewed lessons learned in implementing the tool in a number of countries. The event, hosted by IFPRI and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), featured many researchers and country representatives.
“This tool is an important breakthrough for the agriculture sector, and national statistical systems as well,” Jemimah Njuki, Chief of the Economic Empowerment section of UN Women, told participants.
A recording of the event is available here. Below are some key questions raised during the event.
How can policymakers use WEMNS data?
Broadly speaking, WEMNS is one method “we can use to bring visibility to the situation of rural women… Data is not a finish line, it is a starting point. [Data] allows for evidence-based decision making and bringing change to the grassroots,” Njuki said.
Chiara Brunelli, FAO Food Security and Nutrition Officer and Statistician, noted the strategic advantages of integrating the WEMNS questionnaire into already-existing surveys. “Not only is it cost-efficient, but adds value to the data,” she said. “You can link the results from empowerment to other questions in the survey.”
Another strength is that WEMNS can be used in any context. Regina Valiente, Sectoral Specialist at the Presidential Secretariat for Women, Guatemala, noted that the tool is of particular interest to her government, considering the country’s context of gender-based violence. “Ninety-five percent of women who report violence state that they have no income of their own. Thus, the lack of empowerment is considered an underlying cause of violence. It has been prioritized as a public problem,” she said. “It is necessary to have metrics and evidence that allow us to address the situation and condition of rural women in Guatemala. WEMNS can provide this information.”
Theresa Tenneh Dick, Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, Sierra Leone, observed that adverse development outcomes “are not just women’s challenges. They are obstacles to national growth, food security, and poverty reduction. When we empower women, we empower communities and economies. Why is measuring women’s empowerment so critical? Change starts with data. Numbers tell us the stories of gaps and guide us toward policies that are not just well-intentioned, but laser-focused on solving real problems.”
Surveying women and women’s empowerment should be a routine part of national data collection policies and procedures, said Shelton Kanyanda, Commissioner of Statistics at the National Statistical Office, Malawi. It’s critical that WEMNS data be “used for policy and decision-making,” he said. “So, that role would definitely also need IFPRI and other partners to help us frame that data.”
Where was WEMNS piloted? Was there an evaluation or an intervention?
Pilot surveys were carried out in Bangladesh, Guatemala, Malawi, and Nepal. WEMNS is currently being scaled up in three partner countries, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania, as part of the 50×2030 Initiative, a partnership between the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), FAO, and the World Bank aiming to build capacity and close the agricultural data gap in 50 countries by 2030. At present, WEMNS has only been used as a cross-sectional survey and not in impact evaluations.
Who should be sampled for participation in a WEMNS survey? Is it applicable to adolescents?
“The tool was piloted in both rural and urban settings,” noted Agnes Quisumbing, IFPRI Senior Research Fellow. “We did not want it restricted to agriculture; we wanted it applicable to all livelihoods.” Women (and men) surveyed should be aged 18-64; this age range includes older women not of reproductive age in order to generate more comprehensive insights into women’s empowerment regardless of life stage. The tool is “not ready for surveys of adolescents. Some indicators may translate, but not most,” said Jessica Heckert, IFPRI Senior Research Fellow. In addition, the WEMNS has not been used for intrahousehold comparison, Quisumbing said; in studies done so far, one person from each household was randomly selected for participation. “But it might be interesting to do intrahousehold comparisons” in the future, she said.
How are the four WEMNS domains weighted?
WEMNS’s four domains are: Intrinsic agency, instrumental agency, collective agency, and agency-enabling resources, each with three indicators. “Each indicator is equally weighted, so each domain is equally weighted,” Heckert said. “We don’t assign a value to one domain having more weight than another,” as which indicator is most interesting or meaningful may vary from context to context or policy to policy.
What are the current plans for scaling up the tool?
Several approaches are planned, Brunelli said: “In the context of 50×2030, when we have the data from these three countries, we will organize a number of awareness and sensitization events to raise interest about [WEMNS].” Using WEMNS is “something you could do every three to five years to see how empowerment is changing over time,” Njuki said.
Can geospatial data complement WEMNS?
Using geospatial data in conjunction with the WEMNS tool has great potential. “One reason we made WEMNS short is so that WEMNS can be scalable and implemented in large-scale surveys and linked to geospatial information,” Quisumbing said. For example, this could help with program targeting.
Where can one learn more about WEMNS?
The WEMNS page on the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) website, available here, has many resources, including working papers, policy notes, indicator definitions, and a copy of the questionnaire itself.
Emily Myers is a Senior Research Analyst with IFPRI’s Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion (PGI) Unit; Jessica Heckert is a PGI Senior Research Fellow; Hazel Malapit is a PGI Senior Research Coordinator; Agnes Quisumbing is a PGI Senior Research Fellow; Flor Paz is a PGI Senior Research Analyst; Chiara Brunelli is an FAO Food Security and Nutrition Officer and Statistician; Chiara Gnetti is an FAO Communications Specialist. Opinions are the authors’.
Read FAO’s coverage of this event here.
WEMNS was developed by researchers at IFPRI, Emory University, Oxford University, and the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study Unit. This work was supported through a partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), under the umbrella of the 50×2030 Initiative to Close the Agricultural Data Gap.
