The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), launched by IFPRI, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), and USAID's Feed the Future in February 2012, is the first comprehensive and standardized measure to directly measure women’s empowerment and inclusion in the agricultural sector. The WEAI is an innovative tool composed of two sub-indices: one measures women’s empowerment across five domains in agriculture, and the other measures gender parity in empowerment within the household. The tool also measures women’s empowerment relative to men within their households.

Since the original WEAI release, multiple versions of the WEAI have been developed. The Abbreviated WEAI (A-WEAI) is a shorter version of the original that can be used in population-based surveys to measure women’s empowerment. The Project WEAI (Pro-WEAI) instrument, under development, seeks to measure women’s empowerment within project-specific contexts, and includes optional modules tailored to livestock and/or nutrition and health programs. Pro-WEAI development also draws on qualitative methods to enhance understanding of women’s empowerment in specific social and cultural contexts. The qualitative protocols for pro-WEAI are available here, and the survey instrument will be publicly available in late 2020 (currently available upon request). The pro-WEAI for market inclusion (pro-WEAI+MI), still under development, is intended to measure empowerment across agricultural value chains. Pro-WEAI+MI has been piloted in four countries, Bangladesh, Benin, Malawi and the Philippines. To access all WEAI-related materials – research instruments, protocols, publications, and more – visit the WEAI Resource Center website.