A qualitative assessment of a gender-sensitive agricultural training program in Benin: Findings on program experience and women’s empowerment across key agricultural value chains

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Eissler ◽  
Ampa Dogui Diatta ◽  
Jessica Heckert ◽  
Caitlin Nordehn
Keyword(s):  
Training Program ◽  
Women's Empowerment ◽  
Women’S Empowerment ◽  
Qualitative Assessment ◽  
Value Chains

“It takes two”: Women’s empowerment in agricultural value chains

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Ragasa ◽  
Hazel J. Malapit ◽  
Deborah Rubin ◽  
Emily Myers ◽  
Audrey Pereira ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Women's Empowerment ◽  
Women’S Empowerment ◽  
Value Chains

scholarly journals The Influence of Sunflower Commercialisation and Diversity on Women's Empowerment: The Case of Iramba and Mkalama Districts, Singida Region

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devotha B. Mosha ◽  
John Jeckoniah ◽  
Aida Isinika ◽  
Gideon Boniface
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Women's Empowerment ◽  
Women’S Empowerment ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Cash Crop ◽  
Cash Crops ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
And Control

There is a growing body of literature that argues that normally women derive little benefit from cash crops. Some of the barriers leading to women having less benefit from cash crop value chains include cultural norms and power differences in access to, and control over, resources among actors in value chains. It is also argued that women’s participation in different forms of collective action help women to increase benefits to them through their increased agency, hence enabling them to utilise existing and diverse options for their empowerment. This paper explores how women have benefited from their engagement in sunflower commercialisation and how culture has influenced changes in access to, and control over, resources, including land, for their empowerment.

"It takes two": Women’s empowerment in agricultural value chains in Malawi

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Ragasa ◽  
Hazel J. Malapit ◽  
Deborah Rubin ◽  
Emily Myers ◽  
Audrey Pereira ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Women's Empowerment ◽  
Women’S Empowerment ◽  
Value Chains

scholarly journals Women’s empowerment and gender equality in agricultural value chains: evidence from four countries in Asia and Africa

Food Security ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnes Quisumbing ◽  
Jessica Heckert ◽  
Simone Faas ◽  
Gayathri Ramani ◽  
Kalyani Raghunathan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Women's Empowerment ◽  
Household Wealth ◽  
Women’S Empowerment ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Men And Women

AbstractWomen play important roles at different nodes of both agricultural and off-farm value chains, but in many countries their contributions are either underestimated or limited by prevailing societal norms or gender-specific barriers. We use primary data collected in Asia (Bangladesh, Philippines) and Africa (Benin, Malawi) to examine the relationships between women’s empowerment, gender equality, and participation in a variety of local agricultural value chains that comprise the food system. We find that the value chain and the specific node of engagement matter, as do other individual and household characteristics, but in different ways depending on country context. Entrepreneurship—often engaged in by wealthier households with greater ability to take risks—is not necessarily empowering for women; nor is household wealth, as proxied by their asset ownership. Increased involvement in the market is not necessarily correlated with greater gender equality. Education is positively correlated with higher empowerment of both men and women, but the strength of this association varies. Training and extension services are generally positively associated with empowerment but could also exacerbate the inequality in empowerment between men and women in the same household. All in all, culture and context determine whether participation in value chains—and which node of the value chain—is empowering. In designing food systems interventions, care should be taken to consider the social and cultural contexts in which these food systems operate, so that interventions do not exacerbate existing gender inequalities.

Empowering Women Entrepreneurs Through Microfinance - A Case of Rural Bangladesh

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Saida Parvin
Keyword(s):  
Women's Empowerment ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Women’S Empowerment ◽  
Case Study Method ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Theoretical Contribution ◽  
Donor Agencies ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Impact

Women’s empowerment has been at the centre of research focus for many decades. Extant literature examined the process, outcome and various challenges. Some claimed substantial success, while others contradicted with evidence of failure. But the success remains a matter of debate due to lack of empirical evidence of actual empowerment of women around the world. The current study aimed to address this gap by taking a case study method. The study critically evaluates 20 cases carefully sampled to include representatives from the entire country of Bangladesh. The study demonstrates popular beliefs about microfinance often misguide even the borrowers and they start living in a fabricated feeling of empowerment, facing real challenges to achieve true empowerment in their lives. The impact of this finding is twofold; firstly there is a theoretical contribution, where the definition of women’s empowerment is proposed to be revisited considering findings from these cases. And lastly, the policy makers at governmental and non-governmental organisations, and multinational donor agencies need to revise their assessment tools for funding.

Women’s Education May Be Even Better Than We Thought: Estimating the Gains from Education When Schooling Ain’t Learning

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Kaffenberger ◽  
Lant Pritchett
Keyword(s):  
Child Mortality ◽  
Women's Education ◽  
Basic Education ◽  
Women's Empowerment ◽  
Women’S Empowerment ◽  
Life Outcomes ◽  
Primary Schooling ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Financial Practices ◽  
Attenuation Bias

Women’s schooling has long been regarded as one of the best investments in development. Using two different cross-nationally comparable data sets which both contain measures of schooling, assessments of literacy, and life outcomes for more than 50 countries, we show the association of women’s education (defined as schooling and the acquisition of literacy) with four life outcomes (fertility, child mortality, empowerment, and financial practices) is much larger than the standard estimates of the gains from schooling alone. First, estimates of the association of outcomes with schooling alone cannot distinguish between the association of outcomes with schooling that actually produces increased learning and schooling that does not. Second, typical estimates do not address attenuation bias from measurement error. Using the new data on literacy to partially address these deficiencies, we find that the associations of women’s basic education (completing primary schooling and attaining literacy) with child mortality, fertility, women’s empowerment and the associations of men’s and women’s basic education with positive financial practices are three to five times larger than standard estimates. For instance, our country aggregated OLS estimate of the association of women’s empowerment with primary schooling versus no schooling is 0.15 of a standard deviation of the index, but the estimated association for women with primary schooling and literacy, using IV to correct for attenuation bias, is 0.68, 4.6 times bigger. Our findings raise two conceptual points. First, if the causal pathway through which schooling affects life outcomes is, even partially, through learning then estimates of the impact of schooling will underestimate the impact of education. Second, decisions about how to invest to improve life outcomes necessarily depend on estimates of the relative impacts and relative costs of schooling (e.g., grade completion) versus learning (e.g., literacy) on life outcomes. Our results do share the limitation of all previous observational results that the associations cannot be given causal interpretation and much more work will be needed to be able to make reliable claims about causal pathways.

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