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With research staff from more than 70 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

Danielle Resnick

Danielle Resnick is a Senior Research Fellow in the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit and a Non-Resident Fellow in the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution. Her research focuses on the political economy of agricultural policy and food systems, governance, and democratization, drawing on extensive fieldwork and policy engagement across Africa and South Asia.

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What we do

Since 1975, IFPRI’s research has been informing policies and development programs to improve food security, nutrition, and livelihoods around the world.

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Where we work

IFPRI currently has more than 480 employees working in over 70 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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Projects

Evaluating the Impacts of Agricultural Development Programming on Gender Inequalities, Asset Disparities, and Rural Livelihoods

The project looks at a variety of agricultural development projects to what is the impact of these projects on men’s and women’s assets with assets defined quite broadly (for example, livestock, genetic resources, equipment, access to markets, extension, social capital, human capital and so on) and whether gender targeting makes a difference in terms of outcomes.

Project duration: 2009 – 2023

Funders

Gates Foundation

United States of America

CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) led by IFPRI

Partners

African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD)

BRAC University

Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI)

Radical Inclusion

Gender-Responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transform (GREAT)

Publications

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Working Paper

Women’s empowerment and conflict in Burkina Faso: Learning from a randomized trial and non-random conflict

2025Heckert, Jessica; Sow, Doulo; Tranchant, Jean-Pierre; Paz, Florencia; Gelli, Aulo
Details

Women’s empowerment and conflict in Burkina Faso: Learning from a randomized trial and non-random conflict

Armed conflict has myriad negative consequences on the wellbeing of women and men, and its non-random nature makes it difficult to study its impacts. We examine the changes in empowerment during the period of 2017-2020 in western Burkina Faso as armed conflict moved closer. We combined data from the randomized-controlled trial of Soutenir l’Exploitation Familiale pour Lancer l’Elevage des Volailles et Valoriser l’Economie Rural (SELEVER) a gender- and nutrition-sensitive poultry production intervention, which collected the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index with geospatial- and date-specific data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project database. To evaluate the effect of conflict on empowerment, we estimated a continuous difference-in-difference model, separately for women and men, across multiple empowerment indicators, in which the primary explanatory variable describes the change in distance to conflict during this time period. Then, to determine if the SELEVER program had a protective effect when there was increased proximity to conflict, we estimated these models separately for the treatment and control groups and compare the difference in the coefficients. As conflict encroached, there was a shift in intrahousehold decision making that suggests less coordination between spouses and fewer decisions made jointly, along with a greater acceptance of intimate partner violence among women. We also found increases in other outcomes, such as men’s group membership, and women’s and men’s access to credit. These changes may be attributable to how communities responded and how humanitarian aid was delivered. We found that the SELEVER program had a protective effect on men’s work balance and the amount of time that both women and men spent working. Notably, however, women spent more time on childcare activities as conflict become closer.

Year published

2025

Authors

Heckert, Jessica; Sow, Doulo; Tranchant, Jean-Pierre; Paz, Florencia; Gelli, Aulo

Citation

Heckert, Jessica; Sow, Doulo; Tranchant, Jean-Pierre; Paz, Florencia; and Gelli, Aulo. 2025. Women’s empowerment and conflict in Burkina Faso: Learning from a randomized trial and non-random conflict. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2403. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/180989

Country/Region

Burkina Faso

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Western Africa; Gender; Women’s Empowerment; Conflicts; Randomized Controlled Trials; Fragility

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Working Paper

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Brief

Measuring gender sensitive climate adaptation in agrifood systems for climate finance

2025Eissler, Sarah; Magalhaes, Marilia; Ringler, Claudia; Bryan, Elizabeth
Details

Measuring gender sensitive climate adaptation in agrifood systems for climate finance

There is a need for clear and flexible national-level frameworks to help countries identify their progress towards gender integration in climate adaptation. Gender-sensitive frameworks would also help strengthen gender considerations when determining climate financing and steer potential financing to accelerate progress towards gender equality. Without such frameworks, it becomes difficult to direct climate finance strategically to women in the AFS and to systematically track the adaptation outcomes associated with the funds they receive. This brief draws on a literature review of existing policies and frameworks and key informant interviews (KIIs) with experts in designing gender-informed national-level frameworks conducted by researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) under the Gender, Climate Change, and Nutrition (GCAN) Integration Initiative and the CGIAR Climate Action Science Program. In this brief, we summarize the need for clear and applicable national-level frameworks to measure gender integration in climate change adaptation strategies and how such guidance could be used to direct climate financing to address gender equality.

Year published

2025

Authors

Eissler, Sarah; Magalhaes, Marilia; Ringler, Claudia; Bryan, Elizabeth

Citation

Eissler, Sarah; Magalhaes, Marilia; Ringler, Claudia; and Bryan, Elizabeth. 2025. Measuring gender sensitive climate adaptation in agrifood systems for climate finance. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/179203

Keywords

Climate Change; Gender; Climate Change Adaptation; Agrifood Systems; Financing

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Brief

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Working Paper

Gender, nutrition-sensitive agricultural interventions, and resilience: Evidence from rural Bangladesh

2025Hoddinott, John F.; Ahmed, Akhter; Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Quisumbing, Agnes R.
Details

Gender, nutrition-sensitive agricultural interventions, and resilience: Evidence from rural Bangladesh

We assess whether a gender- and nutrition-sensitive agricultural interventions, fielded in rural Bangladesh, aimed at improving food production diversity enhanced resilience and whether impacts persisted post-intervention. Four years post-program, treatment arms that included both agriculture and nutrition training reduced the likelihood that households undertook more severe forms of coping strategies during the Covid-19 pandemic. There were persistent improvements in household consumption and diet quality; impacts were largest for poor but not the poorest households in our sample. Underlying these results were the long-term beneficial impacts on women’s agricultural knowledge, agency, and increased engagement in agricultural activities.

Year published

2025

Authors

Hoddinott, John F.; Ahmed, Akhter; Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Quisumbing, Agnes R.

Citation

Hoddinott, John F.; Ahmed, Akhter; Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; and Quisumbing, Agnes R. 2025. Gender, nutrition-sensitive agricultural interventions, and resilience: Evidence from rural Bangladesh. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2375. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/177816

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Southern Asia; Resilience; Shocks; Gender; Nutrition

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Working Paper

Blogs

Adapt, assess, progress: Integrating measures of women’s empowerment into rural development projects
Research Post
 | 
May 13, 2024

Adapt, assess, progress: Integrating measures of women’s empowerment into rural development projects

By Carlo Azzarri, Sedi-Anne Boukaka, Jessica Heckert, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Greg Seymour, and Sara Savastano

A new tool developed by IFPRI and IFAD.

Policy seminar: New pro-WEAI modules gauge women’s empowerment in nutrition and health, market inclusion
Event Post
 | 
May 26, 2023

Policy seminar: New pro-WEAI modules gauge women’s empowerment in nutrition and health, market inclusion

By Simone Faas

An expanding toolkit for assessing key gender issues in development projects.

Time-use agency: A new measure of women’s empowerment
Research Post
 | 
July 02, 2021

Time-use agency: A new measure of women’s empowerment

By Sarah Eissler, Jessica Heckert, Emily Myers, Greg Seymour, Sheela Sinharoy, Kathryn M. Yount, and Jessica Wallach

A more nuanced approach to gauging women's strategic choices about time and work.

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Events

Assessing Progress toward Women’s Empowerment in Agricultural Development Projects
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

September 19, 2023, 1:30 – 4:30 pm

Assessing Progress toward Women’s Empowerment in Agricultural Development Projects

Hybrid Event: September 19, 2023 – 1:30 PM to 4:30 PM CEST. This event will provide a platform for implementers and partners to discuss approaches that have worked to empower women across projects and identify implications for future programming and scaling up.

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 […]

Project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (Pro-WEAI) Learning and Outreach Event
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

April 25 to 27, 2018

Project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (Pro-WEAI) Learning and Outreach Event

The event “Pro-WEAI: A New Tool for Measuring Women’s Empowerment in Agricultural Development Projects” is a “soft launch” of the index and its associated nutrition module as a tool for measuring and assessing the impact of agricultural development projects on women’s empowerment in agriculture. The project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) is a new […]

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News

April 27, 2018 | Press Release

New Index: Pro-WEAI Measures Women’s Empowerment, Agency, and Inclusion in the Agriculture Sector

Washington, D.C.: The pilot version of a new index for measuring the empowerment, agency, and inclusion of women in the agriculture sector, the Project-Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (Pro-WEAI), was launched today. Developed jointly by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), and thirteen partner projects, the […]

Funders

Gates Foundation
United States of America
CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) led by IFPRI

Team members

No staff members to display.
Hazel Malapit

Hazel Malapit

Senior Research Coordinator, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Rasmi Avula

Rasmi Avula

Research Fellow, Nutrition,
Diets, and Health

Neha Kumar

Neha Kumar

Senior Research Fellow, Nutrition,
Diets, and Health

Emily Myers

Emily Myers

Senior Research Analyst, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Shalini Roy

Shalini Roy

Senior Research Fellow, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Other

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