Amber Peterman's (UNICEF) presentation at Sickkids Global Health Research Center workshop in Toronto, April 11 2019.

1. Amber Peterman
Empowerment Workshop April 17-18th 2019: Toronto
MEASUREMENT OF EMPOWERMENT:
Critiques & Innovation from Development Economics

2. MEASURING ‘EMPOWERMENT’: HOW FAR HAVE WE COME?
Malhortra, Schuler, Boender (2002): “Measuring Women’s
Empowerment as a Variable in International Development”
“Vast and interconnected” . . .
“To date, neither the World Bank nor any other major
development agency has developed a rigorous method for
measuring and tracking changes in levels of
empowerment”. . .
Economic
Socio-cultural
Familial/
interpersonal
Legal
Political
Psychological
Household Community Broader Arenas

3. THE CONCEPTUAL CHALLENGE: ARE WE REALLY
MEASURING EMPOWERMENT?
 “Expansion in people’s ability to
make strategic life choices in a
context where this was
previously denied” (Kabeer 2001)
 Should be distinct from gender
equality, equity and status
 Should operate at different
levels: 1) power within (intrinsic
agency), 2) power to
(instrumental agency), 3) power
with (collective agency)
RESOURCES
AGENCY
ACHIEVEMENTS

4. HOW DO WE OPERATIONALIZE AGENCY? (Donald et al. 2017)
• Intra-household decision-making (e.g. DHS)
• Autonomy; Relative autonomy index (RAI)
• Self-efficacy
• Confidence
• Capacity to set & achieve goals
• Locus of control
• Self-assessed life freedom & control (e.g. WVS)
• Voice (individual & collective) & participation

5. DECIDING OVER WHAT?
1. What type of decisions are ‘strategic’ life choices in different
settings?
• Are purchases for household daily needs strategic?
• Is visiting family or friends strategic?
• Are decisions across domains appropriately captured (social, economic,
political, etc.?)
2. Are decisions specific enough?
• Instead of asking “Who usually makes decisions about healthcare for
yourself?”
• Consider asking: “If you ever need medicine for yourself (for a
headache, for example), could you go buy it yourself?
An evaluation in Bangladesh found different responses to general
vs. specific question; suggests specific questions are easier to
accurately answer (Glennerster et al. 2017).

6. HOW DO WE INTERPRET
JOINTNESS?
 Is joint decision-making “better” or
“worse” than sole decision-making?
How do we minimize implicit
judgement about what is preferred?
 Analysis shows that women and
men (in Ghana & Bangladesh)
associate different domains more
and less strongly with autonomous
motivation
 Sole DM matters for women in
Ghana select domains; Women in
Bangladesh prefer joint DM
Women in Ghana (N=1785)

7. • Should we be measuring ‘how much’ input, rather than
‘with whom’ (by whom)?
• Alternative from the WEAI: How much input do you have into
decision around [X]?
• Response options:
• (a) no input or input into a few decisions,
• (b) input into some decisions,
• (c) input into most decisions,
• (d) input into all decisions,
• (e) no decision made.
• (e) allows respondents to report (opt out) if a decision in that
particular domain has not been made recently or is not
relevant to them.
DO RESPONSE OPTION CONSTRAIN (MISLEAD)
ANALYSIS?

8. DECISION-MAKING:
FROM WHO’s
PERSPECTIVE?
• Couples agree 6-64%
of the time
(Bangladesh) & 67-
82% of the time
(Ghana)
• Women tend to report
decisions as joint, men
tend to report as sole
Couples in Bangladesh (2011-2012)

9. WHY ARE DECISIONS MADE?
The Self-determination continuum (Seymour & Peterman 2018)

10. ASK ME WHY? VINETTES TO UNDERSTAND
DECISION-MAKING MOTIVATION (Bernard et al. 2018)
• Vignettes around production of
dairy & consumption of dairy in
Senegal = 5 typologies of
households.
• Men most likely to be deciding in
dictator households; Women
most likely in separate sphere
households.
• WHO decides does not affect
production/consumption
outcomes, but WHY they decide
does matter (norms worst off,
informed best off).

11. OTHER CHALLENGES
• Capturing preferences  To what extent do you feel you can make
your own personal decisions regarding [X] if you want(ed) to? (WEAI)
• Social desirability bias  Observational (field experiments) or use
indirect methods (list randomization), solicit willingness to pay estimates
-- however these methods may be difficult in national surveys
• Empowerment as a process  Take measures over time and analyze
changes
• Disempowerment can heighten data collection challenges  When
women face structural inequalities this can compound measurement
challenges. Create space for private interviews, same sex/locally
recruited to encourage truthful answers (Glennerster et al. 2017).

12. INDEX EXAMPLES: WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT IN
AGRICULTURE INDEX (WEAI) (Malapit et al. 2019)
• Objectives: Developed by USAID, IFPRI, OPHI in
2012 to measure inclusion of women in agriculture
sector
• Survey based: Constructed using interviews of
primary male and female in the same household
• Versions & iterations:
1. Abbreviated WEAI (a-WEAI)
2. Project-level WEAI (pro-WEAI)  Health &
Nutrition
3. WEAI for Value Chains (WEAI4VC)
4. WE in Livestock Index (WELI)
5. WE in Fish Index (WEFI) 12 indicators of empowerment
(equal weighting)

13. WEAI ADAPTIONS: 53 countries, 86 organizations

14. WEAI QUALITATIVE WORK: HOW COMMUNITIES
UNDERSTAND EMPOWERMENT (Meinzen-Dick et al. 2019)
 Synthesis of Pro-WEAI data across 8 projects (SA & SSA)
 Empowerment = emancipated, admired, dignified, lift up, enable
 Each component of empowerment is relational, not just about
the individual (other women as well as men. . . )
RESOURCES AGENCY ACHIEVEMENTS
• Economic means
• Connections
• Confidence
• Help with labor
• Taking care of oneself
• Taking care of family needs
• Taking care of others
• Active, hard work
• Good decisions, joint decisions
• Exercising ownership
• Following social norms
• Financial status
• Well dressed
• Good appearance
• Admired

15. MACRO-LEVEL INDEX EXAMPLE: SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
& GENDER INDEX (SIGI) (4th edition, 2019: OECD, https://www.genderindex.org/)
“Discriminatory social institutions are defined as the formal and informal laws, attitudes and practices
that restrict women’s and girls’ access to rights, justice and empowerment opportunities.”

16. CONCLUSIONS &
REFLECTIONS
01. Women’s decision-making often the
primary (& only) indicator of women’s agency
operationalized—however large gaps in
understanding what is being captured & how
to interpret measures
02. Women’s & men’s goals/preferences
(values) should be reflected (captured)
alongside agency to achieve these goals.
03. We should be capturing multiple
measures of agency, over different domains
to triangulate outcomes

17. IMPLICATIONS &
IDEAS FOR
FUTURE RESERCH
01. Measuring empowerment is complex—let’s
resist simplification & strive to measure it fully
(rather than related concepts, e.g. women’s
status or wellbeing)
02. Much to be gained from inter-disciplinary &
mixed method work.
03. While seeking to distill commonalities, we
cannot ignore context and individual specificity
of empowerment across different types of
agency—for women and men / girls and boys.

18. Thank you!
amberpeterman@gmail.com
apeterman@unicef.org
This presentation draws on research
of colleagues at IFPRI, including
Greg Seymour, Hazel Malapit,
Agnes Quisumbing, Ruth Meinzen-
Dick and the WEAI team, Cheryl
Doss, Melissa Hidrobo and others.

19. CITATIONS
• Bernard T, Doss C, Hidrobo M, Hoel, Kieran C. 2018. Ask me Why: Using vignettes to understand patterns of Intrahousehold
Decision-Making in rural Senegal. IFPRI Discussion Paper 01784: http://ebrary.ifpri.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15738coll2/id/133029
• Donald et al. 2017. Measuring Women’s Agency. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 8148:
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/333481500385677886/pdf/WPS8148.pdf
• Glennerster R, Walsh C and Diaz-Martin L. 2017. A Practical Guide to Measuring Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment in Impact
Evaluations. J-PAL.
• Malapit, HJ.; Quisumbing, AR.; Meinzen-Dick, RS; Seymour, G; Martinez, EM.; Heckert, J; Rubin, D; Vaz, A; and Yount, KM. 2019.
Development of the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI). IFPRI Discussion Paper 1796.
Washington, DC: IFPRI. http://ebrary.ifpri.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15738coll2/id/133061
• Meinzen-Dick, RS; Rubin, D; Elias, M; Mulema, AA and Myers, E. 2019. Women’s empowerment in agriculture: Lessons from
qualitative research. IFPRI Discussion Paper 1797. Washington, DC: IFPRI.
http://ebrary.ifpri.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15738coll2/id/133060
• Kabeer, N. (2001). Reflections on the measurement of women’s empowerment. In A. Sisask (Series Ed.), Sida studies no. 3:
Discussing women’s empowerment – theory and practice (pp. 17–57). Stockholm, Sweden: Novum Grafiska AB.
• Seymour & Peterman. 2018. Context and measurement: An analysis of the relationship between intra-household decision making
and autonomy. World Development 111: 97-112: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.06.027
• Slide 1: © FAO/IvanGrifi/19431674444_a702f46a21
• Slide 17: © FAO/IvanGrifi/19431617964_bf1542f18a