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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

Erick Boy

researcher spotlight

Erick Boy

Erick Boy is the Chief Nutritionist in the HarvestPlus section of the Innovation Policy and Scaling Unit. As head of nutrition for the HarvestPlus Program since 2008, he has led research that has generated scientific evidence on biofortified staple crops as efficacious and effective interventions to help address iron, vitamin A, and zinc deficiency in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and South Asia.

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IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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Projects

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) 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.

Project duration: 2012 – ongoing

Contact

Hazel Malapit

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Publications

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Report

Women’s economic empowerment and leadership: Examining an intervention for smallholder farmers delivered via farmer producer organizations in Guatemala using qualitative methods

2025Myers, Emily; Heckert, Jessica
Details

Women’s economic empowerment and leadership: Examining an intervention for smallholder farmers delivered via farmer producer organizations in Guatemala using qualitative methods

Women work across multiple nodes in agricultural value chains, though their participation in value chains varies within and across contexts and their contributions are often underrecognized (Malapit et al., 2020; Quisumbing et al., 2021). Addressing issues such as weak economic growth, climate change, and hunger will require strengthening agricultural value chains, though doing so without a gender-sensitive lens may exacerbate existing gender inequalities within them (Rubin & Manfre, 2014). Development practitioners seeking to strengthen agricultural value chains are increasingly interested in programs that use group-based approaches, as they may reach many people efficiently using such a strategy. However, there is not much evidence on how to increase women’s economic opportunities in agricultural value chains and bolster women’s leadership within the context of group-based interventions. TechnoServe, with funding support from the Walmart Foundation, began implementing the Smallholder Market Access (SMA) program in Guatemala and Nicaragua in 2019. The goal of this program was to work with farmer producer organizations (FPOs) and affiliated smallholder farmers in fresh produce agricultural value chains (AVCs) to increase the productivity, profits, and the market share of FPOs among smallholder farmers. The program also sought to strengthen women’s inclusion in AVCs, leadership, and empowerment by offering both gender-responsive and gender-transformative program components, particularly though agronomy trainings and gender equality trainings for women and men, as well as women’s leadership trainings for women only. This qualitative study focuses on SMA in Guatemala. We investigated gender dynamics in FPOs, women’s empowerment, women’s leadership, and how SMA may influence these themes. Ultimately, the goal of this study was to gain insights on the strengths of SMA programming with regard to women smallholder farmers’ economic and leadership opportunities, as well as to identify opportunities to strengthen the program. We collected data from in-depth interviews with eight SMA staff, nine FPO lead ers, and 18 FPO members. We also conducted six single-sex focus group discussions with FPO members, which included 15 women and 13 men total. The FPOs sampled did not receive the full SMA treatment prior to data collection; as such, the results presented in this study reflect perceptions of different components of SMA that had been only partially implemented prior to data collection.

Year published

2025

Authors

Myers, Emily; Heckert, Jessica

Citation

Myers, Emily; and Heckert, Jessica. 2025. Women’s economic empowerment and leadership: Examining an intervention for smallholder farmers delivered via farmer producer organizations in Guatemala using qualitative methods. IFPRI Project Report July 2025. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/175619

Country/Region

Guatemala

Keywords

Latin America and the Caribbean; Central America; Women; Women’s Empowerment; Smallholders; Agricultural Value Chains; Market Access; Economic Development; Training

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Report

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Brief

Understanding women’s time use in farming communities: Insights from the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index

2025Abdu, Aishat; Malapit, Hazel J.; Go, Ara
Details

Understanding women’s time use in farming communities: Insights from the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index

Agricultural programs targeting women may increase women’s work burdens and shift the distribution of work between productive and reproductive tasks. Complementary information on women’s sense of control over their time highlights additional benefits of agricultural programs beyond changes in women’s workloads. Despite program interventions, gender norms often persist, affecting how communities perceive work intensity and division of responsibilities between men and women. The relationship between women’s time use and nutrition is complex and interacts with mediating factors, requiring a multifaceted approach to program design and evaluation. Evidence linking time use data to nonfarm work is lacking, highlighting the need to leverage WEAI time use data to fill this critical gap.

Year published

2025

Authors

Abdu, Aishat; Malapit, Hazel J.; Go, Ara

Citation

Abdu, Aishat; Malapit, Hazel; and Go, Ara. 2025. Understanding women’s time use in farming communities: Insights from the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index. WEAI Applications and Insights 3. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://hdl.handle.net/10568/174463

Keywords

Women; Agriculture; Gender; Female Labour; Division of Labour

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Brief

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Journal Article

From bargaining power to empowerment: Measuring the unmeasurable

2025Quisumbing, Agnes R.
Details

From bargaining power to empowerment: Measuring the unmeasurable

Measuring power is central to empirical work on intrahousehold and gender relations. This paper reviews how progress in the measurement of power within households has facilitated our understanding of household decision-making and creates new opportunities for programs and policy. Early efforts to test household models focused on measuring spousal bargaining power, usually in models featuring two decision-makers within the household. Proxy measures for bargaining power included age, education, assets, and “outside options” that could affect spouses’ threat points within marriage. Evidence rejecting the collective model of the household has influenced the design of policies and programs, notably conditional cash transfer programs. Efforts have since shifted to measuring empowerment, drawing on theories of agency and power. Since 2010, several measures of women’s empowerment have been developed, including the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) and its variants. A distinct feature of the WEAI, like other counting-based measures, is its decomposability into its component indicators, which makes identifying sources of disempowerment possible. The WEAI indicators also embody jointness of decision-making or ownership, which better reflects actual decision-making within households compared to 2-person bargaining models. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research. This paper was presented at a Plenary Session of the 32nd International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE) 2024, held from 2–7 August, 2024 in New Delhi, India.

Year published

2025

Authors

Quisumbing, Agnes R.

Citation

Quisumbing, Agnes R. 2025. From bargaining power to empowerment: Measuring the unmeasurable. Agricultural Economics 56(3): 419-430. https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.70022

Keywords

Bargaining Power; Decision Making; Households; Women’s Empowerment; Gender

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.70022 Source record

Project

Agriculture for Nutrition and Health

Record type

Journal Article

Blogs

Applying the Women's Empowerment Metric in National Statistical Systems (WEMNS) to build gender equity
IFPRI Blog
 | 
May 07, 2025

Applying the Women’s Empowerment Metric in National Statistical Systems (WEMNS) to build gender equity

By Emily Myers, Jessica Heckert, Hazel Malapit, Agnes Quisumbing, Flor Paz, Chiara Brunelli, and Chiara Gnetti

A tool to collect key data sometimes missing from household surveys.

Adapt, assess, progress: Integrating measures of women’s empowerment into rural development projects
IFPRI Blog
 | 
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: Scaling up the new Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS) tool
IFPRI Blog
 | 
March 07, 2024

Policy seminar: Scaling up the new Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS) tool

By Emily Myers, Flor Paz, and Jennifer Johnson

Research on gender and women’s empowerment in food systems and global development is central to IFPRI’s mission. Here we mark International Women’s Day (March 8)—with the theme “Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress”—with an account of our continuing efforts to develop and deploy metrics on women’s empowerment in agriculture. The 2015 adoption of Sustainable Development Goal […]

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Events

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

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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.

Into, Through and Beyond USAID Programs: Lessons from the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index
IFPRI at External Event

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March 29, 2023, 9:00 – 10:15 am

Into, Through and Beyond USAID Programs: Lessons from the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index

Virtual Event: March 29, 2023 – 9:00 AM- 10:15 AM EDT. This webinar will mark the launch of two briefs, one on the use cases of WEAI in USAID projects worldwide and the other on how WEAI has informed and supported the design of policies and programs in Bangladesh.

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 […]

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Team members

Hazel Malapit

Hazel Malapit

Senior Research Coordinator, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Hazel Malapit

Hazel Malapit

Senior Research Coordinator, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Emily Myers

Emily Myers

Senior Research Analyst, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Ara Go

Ara Go

Senior Program Manager, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Other

Related Projects

Topics/Countries

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